Labouring to walk in the higher gravity, we trudged our way across the rocky regolith that passes for ground on Mercury. The weight of the pressure suits did nothing but add to our workload. The one hundred metres between the ships felt like a ten-kilometre hike with a full pack. Wanting to ask Garrick if he parked so far away because he worried about getting a scratch on the paint, I decided to keep my mouth shut and continue walking.
My heavy breathing was all I heard as we arrived to stand under the belly of the huge vessel. The landing apparatus supported the hull some ten metres above us and no access port presented itself for us to enter. Dunn removed a pad from the pocket of his suit and activated the controls with the clumsy gloves he wore.
An access ramp descended, and he climbed up, followed by the rest of us. At the top, we were met by a closed doorway. He opened a panel beside the door and keyed in a very long code. A small opening appeared on the wall and he inserted his left arm up to the elbow. He winced as the security system fired a needle probe through the fabric to sample his blood. I held my breath while the computer decided if the DNA matched its records. Suddenly, I did not feel as confident in my database hacking skills as I had a few hours earlier.
The security system withdrew the needle and sealed his suit. The door slid open revealing the black interior of the lifeless ship.
We followed Dunn into the derelict’s airlock, our helmet lights the only illumination. I removed the bio-scanner from my utility belt and interlinked it to my helmet’s HUD. The typical readouts jumped up before me. With my CI, I adjusted the settings to scan for viral contamination.
When Dunn had provided me with the strange detection code of the contagion, I reviewed the specifications closely. What I saw scared the shit out of me. The detector was calibrated to look for a variant of an old Terran virus related to Ebola but a thousand times more infectious. Even wearing a space suit, this was nothing I wanted to be exposed to. Thankfully, nothing came up on the scanner.
Dunn didn’t need a doctor for this; if the contagion was present, we were screwed. We wouldn’t be able to return to the shuttle because even attempting to remove the contaminated suits would result in immediate infection and death within hours. A functioning decontamination chamber might be of help, but only if programmed with a specialized nanite population designed for the specific microbe. I could only pray nothing escaped the containment field in the bio-lab, otherwise we were all dead.
“Nothing is in here. I’m transferring the protocol to each of your HUD’s in case we are separated. If the bio-alert goes off in your ear, it means you’ve encountered a released virus and you should alert me without delay. Until we clear this ship, we won’t turn on life support and absolutely nobody cracks open their suit after that without my final clearance.”
Everyone voiced understanding and we exited the airlock.
The Helios had been parked here for some time. The interior temperature read as a cozy minus 150 Celsius, only ten degrees warmer than the yearlong planetary night time outside.
A startled cry crackled in my speaker. It sounded like the young engineer, Bogdan.
“What is it?” asked Dunn.
“A body! A dead body!” he called out.
We made our way as fast as our clumsy suits allowed to where he and Schmidt stood. Their helmet lights illuminated a frozen corpse slumped in a chair, head lying on a table. The man appeared to be napping at his desk when he died. I ran a detailed scan of the body and the surrounding area but found no trace of any contagion. The dead crewman was a solid block of ice, so I couldn’t turn him to examine the face.
“What happened to him?” asked Bogdan.
“You mean aside from the obvious? I don’t know. Seems he succumbed before the environmental systems failed. There is some blood on the desk under his head, so it may have been an injury.” I didn’t want to mention the hemorrhagic virus. The kid was freaked out enough.
“I’m surprised there is even a body here after this long. Why isn’t it cremated?” asked Schmaltz.
“We’re near the North pole. It never gets too hot,” answered Dunn.
“The perfect conditions to preserve something, if you wanted to,” I said.
Dunn turned towards me and his helmet lights shone in my face, so I did not see his expression. I imagined he didn’t like my editorial comment. I addressed the entire group, changing the topic.
“For the moment, we should finish our survey; see if we find anyone else. Touch nothing. Just record what you find. And Schmaltz, under no circumstances do I want the life support activated until we can determine how this poor fellow was killed, understand?”
I counted the number of space suits standing around.
“Where’s Hodgson?”
Everyone shone their lights about cabin looking for him. A voice crackled over the comm, “I’m headed for the bridge.”
“Umm, okay,” I said.
Dunn broke in, “Good call, Hodgson. Find out what you can. We can make better time if we split up. You all have the ship’s schematics uploaded and available on your HUD. You two,” he indicated Schmaltz and his assistant, “go to engineering and search every cabin and hallway on the way. Remember what you’ve just been told. Hodgson check out the command decks, one and two. Doctor, please proceed to the medical facilities. I’ll examine the lower deck and cargo areas.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised that Dunn had the schematics for the ship. It was pretty clear by now who was responsible for it being there. But he certainly seemed as shocked as the rest of us by the discovery of the dead body.
It took about an hour of room by room searching before I finally reached the med bay. On the way, I encountered five more bodies in posed variations of a pain filled death. One, a woman, lay curled in a fetal position in her bed, a sheet pulled up over her shoulders, frozen blood covering the pillow, eyes, nostrils and mouth. Despite her horrific appearance, she appeared peaceful, as if resigned to her fate.
Medical held the real horror. Inside strapped down on examination tables were a half dozen corpses, all in the same painful death rigour. I moved into the facility and found another body restrained to the table in the isolation chamber; patient zero.
In the far corner, the only light other than my own blinked amber at me from across the darkened room. The bio-containment unit still drew some power.
Beside the lit panel, on a table, lay four innocent looking silver tubes, closed on both ends. I recognized them as secure medical transport containers for biologically hazardous samples. Someone was in the process of moving some very dangerous stuff around in the lab. Three of them remained sealed and locked and had a steady green light indicating their contents safely contained. The fourth lay opened and empty.
Panic seized me as I searched for the missing sample cartridge that should have been inside the container. After a few anxious minutes, I located it behind the glass of the lab’s containment chamber. Similar in principle to the cylinders, its design provided a secure, isolated environment to manipulate and experiment on dangerous materials. Modern lab standards required that such a chamber’s structure, windows and seals all have a security field net woven through them. When full power flowed, nothing could move between the molecules of the walls. It was overkill for most biological samples, but the technology was common in nanotech research.
I looked again at the amber LED that first caught my attention. The containment was running on emergency backup, but the light indicated a dangerously low charge. A normal virus shouldn’t be able to move through a wall, let alone these ones, but whatever these guys worked on prompted the need for this level of security. They were anxious about something dangerous getting out. Based on what we found their fears were justified, and the failing power did not bode well for us.
“Schmaltz, where are you?”
“We’re in engineering. Everything is a hell of a mess. Looks like an explosion disabled the ship before it set down here. There are bodies everywhere.”
“That’s interesting, but we might have a bigger problem in medical. The reserve battery for the bio-containment chamber is almost exhausted. Is there another one down there?”
“I haven’t seen one yet. How much juice is left?”
“I dunno, maybe an hour or more. The indicator is amber and blinking.”
“Mel, the place is a disaster. It may take us hours to find a pack if there is one.”
“If you don’t get some power to this lab, whatever killed the crew will be released and we’ll be in the same shape as the people on this ship.”
“How could the virus harm us?” Dunn interrupted the conversation between Schmaltz and me. “Nothing’s been detected on the viral scanners.”
“The bug may be dead, or only dormant in these conditions. According to the limited information you gave me, it can potentially survive for weeks in a vacuum. But there’s a full sample cartridge open in the bio-containment chamber. If it gets airborne and, on our suits, we won’t be able to take them off without becoming exposed.”
“Give me a minute. I have an idea,” said Schmaltz.
I waited anxiously for what seemed like an hour, staring at the blinking light; willing it to repeat; relieved every time it did.
“Mel, the main bus is intact. I can restart the power.”
“Will that turn on the heat and the air flow?”
“Um, yeah.”
“We can’t do that. The containment chamber needs power, but we must keep everything else aboard in a frozen vacuum. I don’t want to risk activating any virus that might be dormant.”
“Shit. I need another moment. Stand by.” I heard the swish of the blood running through my ears and my mouth was drier than a desert. The light continued to blink, but I could swear the frequency of the blinks slowed down since I first looked at it.
Schmaltz came back on. “The guys that built this ship were smart. The medical centre has a separate power line dedicated to the bio-containment unit. I can turn it on and leave the rest of the vessel freezing in the dark.”
“Do it!”
“Already done Mel. Is it still blinking?”
My heart skipped a beat when I saw the amber LED was no longer on.
“It’s gone out...” I could barely hear my own voice. Tears fogged up my vision. I was dead, thanks to a stupid battery.
“Can you find a green power indicator?”
My gaze frantically scanned the front of the containment control panel and was drawn to the steady glowing light on the other side of the access door.
“Yes, it’s on!” I laughed with relief. I stared at it to assure myself that it showed no sign of going out.
“Doctor, is all secure?”
“Yes, Dunn, everything is good. We’re safe.”
“So, what do you propose we do about the bodies? We need to restore power before the Terrans find us.”
“The entire ship must be considered contaminated, especially anything touched by the blood of the victims. We have to determine if the cold killed the virus or just put it to sleep.”
Careful thought was required before I gave any instructions. I didn’t know how the pathogen had been released. From everything I could tell, it struck fast and hard, killing everyone within a few hours of exposure. I needed to get some tissue samples, preferably from the first and last to be exposed. I was pretty sure the poor fellow in the isolation unit was among the first.
“Hodgson, did you find anything on the bridge? Are there any bodies?”
“Yes, one.”
“Where was he found?”
“He was wearing a pressure suit and strapped into the pilot’s seat, but his visor was opened. I think the poor bastard committed suicide.”
Somebody had to pilot the ship here. He might be the last victim.
“Bring the body to the medical bay. As far as the other remains go, take them outside.”
“Will we contaminate ourselves by handling them?” Dunn seemed worried. It was good to know that something could frighten the man.
“I found no indications of a virus near anyone I’ve examined. The blood around them is frozen, just be careful not to get any of the ice crystals on your suits.”
I honestly didn’t know if what killed everyone was even transferable to us. I did know that we couldn’t stay in these bulky spacesuits indefinitely. We would have to activate life support at some stage, either here or in the drop ship. I suppose a risk of contamination remained if we just left, returned to the shuttle and made a run from the Terrans with Fortuna, but I had no great desire to spend a safe life in a Terran detention facility, assuming they didn’t blow us up instead. A chance existed that one of us had somehow gotten something on our boots or a part of our suits. If the viral agent was dormant, that single exposure would kill us more quickly than the Terran guns the minute we heated it up in our own ship.
Our best bet was for me to examine the tissue in the isolation lab and determine the status of the virus. If dead, we could continue with Dunn’s plan. Regardless, having the crew move corpses gave them something useful to do while I determined if we were going to live or die. No sense letting everyone worry until there was a reason.
“Do you want us to bury them?” asked Bogdan.
“I really don’t think they care. Do as you think best.”
