Arrival (52 page)

Jack stepped inside, pushing the hatch closed behind him with his foot and latching it with his free hand. “Hello!” There was no response. Jack pushed the “All-Call” button on the intercom next to the hatch. “Medical emergency on the EVA deck!” There was no answer. “Can anybody hear me?”

Christ! Is everyone sleeping or something?
Jack slapped the panic button next to the intercom, knowing it would bring everyone running to see what was wrong. But nothing happened. No alarms, no red lights flashing. He slapped the button again. That’s when he realized;
the ship’s been powered down
.

Jack ascended the gangway to the upper level with ease, considering that he had Frank slung over his shoulder. He made his way carefully down the corridor and into the med-lab. There was still no sign of anyone. After dumping Frank onto the exam table, Jack stuck his head back out the med-lab hatch, looking aft toward the habitat section. “Hello! Can I get some help here?” Not a sound. No voices, no movement, only the gentle whirring of ventilation fans. The LRV seemed abandoned.

What is going on here?
he asked himself as he returned to Frank’s side, flipping on the bio-monitor at the head of the table.

Jack watched the sensor displays flicker to life. “What the hell? Everything is in the red! How the hell did you get this fucked up, Frank?” Jack immediately looked around for the drug-kit, finding it on the counter in the corner of the room. He grabbed it and got to work. If his friend was going to live, it would be up to him.

* * *

It had taken Jack nearly an hour to stabilize Frank’s condition. His vital signs had been in the toilet, his body chemistry completely out of whack, and his hydration practically non-existent. Even starting an IV on him had been near impossible. But Frank was stable for now. At least stable enough for Jack to leave his side and take a look around. He had a lot of questions that needed answers.

Jack entered the wardroom. The compartment was in disarray, with one exception. All but one of the chairs at the wardroom table was pushed in tight against the table. As he made his way past the table, he looked into the galley. There were wrappers strewn across the counter. Then he remembered his hunger.

Jack entered the galley and went to the cabinets, going straight to where the basic rations would be stored. He opened the door and found them, grabbing a protein bar and ripping off the wrapper, shoveling it into his mouth and practically swallowing it whole. He grabbed another, and then another, consuming them just as quickly. By the fourth or fifth bar, he realized something.
These things taste like shit!
He looked around for the customary dehydrated fruit, but found none. Then he noticed that there weren’t a whole lot of protein bars left, either.
Strange,
he thought.
There should be a hell of a lot more food stores here, unless they have been on rations for some time now.

Jack forced another few bars down, nearly gagging on their disgusting taste.
The worms tasted better than these things.
He poured himself a tall tumbler of water, drinking it down as he looked through the rest of the cabinets for something better to eat.
The water even tastes funny,
he thought. He knew it had to be safe to drink. The purification system on board the LRV was very efficient. But still, it had a funny taste to it-metallic and unnatural.

Jack set the half-empty tumbler down on the counter and stepped back into the wardroom, heading aft. He slowly entered the berthing section. It was dark and quiet. Each curtain, at the foot of all ten of the berths, was drawn shut. The exer-cycle and even the resistance gym apparatus were stored in their flight positions, secured neatly against the aft bulkhead in between the doors to the two bathrooms.

A terrible feeling came over him.

Jack slid open the curtain on the first berth to the right-his berth. Surprisingly, it was neatly made up, as if he had been living there all along.
At least they didn’t forget about me.
He stepped over to the next berth in line, Laura’s, and slid the curtain open as well. It was also empty, and tidied up. Frank’s berth was next. It was empty, as expected, but was in disarray, and the bedding was stained with sweat and blood.

Jack quickly moved to the next berth, whipping the curtain open. There was Maria, lying on her back, completely still. She was paler than the sheets she was lying on, her exotic, dark complexion pallid and washed away. And she wasn’t moving, not even breathing!

Oh my God!
Jack moved quickly to the other berths, nearly ripping the curtains off of each, only to find the same situation. Lynn, and then Tony, both lying there, unmoving, pale and without any signs of life.

Jack moved to the other side of the compartment, ripping open all the curtains. The rest of them were all there, except, of course, for Will, whom he had buried in the mountains weeks ago.
They’re all, dead!

Jack nearly stumbled backwards in a state of shock.
My crew! My friends!
Questions leapt in and out of his mind in a frenzy of conjecture, possible scenarios playing through his mind as if he were back in the virtual reality simulator on the Daedalus, training for this very mission.

Jack suddenly felt sick. Not physically ill, but emotionally, as if his very reason for existence had suddenly been ripped from his soul. He had to get out of the compartment.

He turned and fled back into the wardroom, looking frantically for answers, but found none. Something was wrong. Suddenly, he felt very confined, almost trapped, inside this artificial, man-made world. He had to get out, back into the open.

The outer hatch flung open, slamming hard against the bulkheads with a metallic
clang
. Jack stumbled down the ramp, tripping and falling to his knees at the bottom as he scrambled out from under the nose of the LRV and into the open snowdrifts.

A few meters later he stopped, resting on his hands and knees in the snow, pausing for a moment before he rolled over onto his back. He laid there in the snow for a few minutes, staring at the gray, cloudy sky as he tried to sort things out in his head.
What happened? How did they die? Where was Laura? Was his own safety threatened? What should he do next? What could he do?

Frank!

He was the only one still alive…but barely. He had to save Frank, at any cost. But he needed answers. He began running training scenarios through his mind again, finding that for some reason, he was able to think more clearly outside.

It has to be some kind of disease,
he realized. It was the only explanation that fit.
But from where? The air? The water? The animals?
But he had been breathing the air for months, and was drinking the water. Hell, he had even been
eating
the animals…
and
the plants. More than one of them had nearly killed him, in fact.

But I’m not sick!

Jack regained his composure, standing back up and heading back inside the ship. He knew that if it had been an illness, some sort of virus, then there would be mention of it in the medical logs. But if he went back inside, he might be exposing
himself
to the disease as well.

It was a risk he was willing to take. His crew was dead, and his best friend was dying. He needed answers.

* * *

Jack sat staring at the data terminal in the med-lab. He knew that he would most likely find some of his answers in Maria’s log entries. But he was having a difficult time reading it. He recognized the characters on the screen; the formed words seemed familiar to him. But he was having difficulty understanding them. It wasn’t that they were medical terminologies, per se. Most of them were common words, words that he
should
know and understand. It was more like he was reading, or trying to read, another language, one that he had not used in years.

Jack continued to struggle with the log, slowly learning about TCS and the crew’s violent contact with the ape-like alien. When he reached the log entry with Laura’s name in it, his breath caught in his throat. He struggled to remember the last time he had spoken with her, laughed with her. The image of her shooting down the transit tunnel, pretending to be a torpedo, suddenly entered his mind. It was like it had happened yesterday, and now she was gone, without hope of return.

Images of the others, their voices, their body language… The way that Mac had constantly taunted Sara. The way Adia had always kept to herself. The way Maria had mothered them all. Their loss was more than what he thought he could bear. His primary responsibility, above all else, had been to keep them safe… And he had failed, failed them all.

Jack leaned back in his chair in the med-lab, tears running down his face. “God, how did this happen?” he cried. He shook his head, cursing his friends’ misfortune.

That’s when he noticed the long red box on the counter. It had the letters ‘RMS’ on it. Another memory triggered.

Jack scanned ahead in the logs furiously, quickly learning the truth.
My friends are alive!

The truth came just in time, as Jack realized that his mind and body resisted being at the terminal for more than an hour at a time. He felt an overwhelming sense of confinement while inside the LRV.
Funny,
he thought bitterly.
After trying for so long to get back to the safety of this ship, I can’t even stand being inside it.

As Jack sat outside watching the sunset, he realized that he would eventually have to put Frank into RMS as well. But his body chemistry was still wavering outside the safe parameters listed in Maria’s medical protocols for RMS induction.
Another few hours
, Jack thought as he watched the sun dip down behind the mountains.
Maybe by tomorrow morning, Frank will be well enough to go into RMS. If the disease doesn’t get to him first.

* * *

Having forced himself to overcome his uneasiness at being inside the ship, Jack woke to the sound of movement coming from the exam table. Jack opened his eyes, finding himself nearly overcome with panic at the sight of the med-lab around him.
Christ! It wasn’t a nightmare after all!
A moan came from his right. A human sound.
Frank!

Jack jumped to his feet to stand at Frank’s side. His vital signs had improved over the last few hours, and his body chemistry was nearly within RMS parameters. “Frank? Can you hear me? It’s me, Jack! Wake up!” But Frank’s eyes did not open. Jack looked at the monitor again, checking the readings that were still in the red. Frank’s blood sugar levels were still dangerously low. And Jack had already given him the last of the intravenous glucose. Most of it had been given to the rest of the crew in preparation for their RMS induction.

Jack’s mind raced. If he could only get some nutrition into Frank’s system. He might be able to get his body chemistry into the green and safely induce RMS. “Hold on, Frank. I’ve got an idea,” Jack announced as he turned to exit the lab. “I’ll be right back.”

Through the haze in his mind, Frank thought he heard something. A grumble, or a growl. Something unintelligible at best. He tried to open his eyes, but could not. He tried his other senses, but found them cloudy as well. All he knew was that he was lying flat. He tried to move his head, to lift it up and look around, but he only became dizzy, and darkness swept over his mind once again.

Jack found Mac’s blender in the galley and quickly dumped the last of the protein bars into its tall, plastic container along with a little water. After plugging it into a power outlet, he turned it on for several seconds before stopping it to check on the contents.
Too chunky
, he thought. He turned the blender on again, this time letting it run even longer before inspecting the concoction again.
Damn it! Still too chunky!
Jack repeated the process, this time trying every setting on the machine.
This stuff will never work!
Jack was frustrated. The protein bars would’ve been perfect. With their glucose levels, he could’ve had Frank’s blood sugar well within normal ranges in no time at all. But the damn things were full of nuts grown on the Daedalus’s agricultural decks, and getting them blended fine enough to go down a feeding tube was impossible using Mac’s simple, worn-out little machine.

What else can I use?
If there had been any dried fruit left, he could’ve used that after reconstituting it.

Jack left the galley, heading out of the ship, and making his way to the ag-hut. But when he got there, it was full of dead or dying plants, all suffering from weeks of obvious neglect and frigid temperatures. The hut’s climate control system had been shut down when Frank put the LRV into power-down mode.
Damn it, all I need is something sweet!

Jack remembered the little, pink, fleshy roots that Will would dig up to use when cooking the meat of some Cetian creature Jack had killed. It had been very sweet, and had worked well to combat the natural bitterness from the flesh of Cetian wildlife.

Jack went back outside and looked around. It hadn’t snowed since early yesterday, and there were several barren patches of ground nearby.

Next to the rocks!
Jack remembered.
Only at lower elevations, like here.

Jack reached the first clearing within minutes, turning over every rock he could find. He found nothing, and quickly moved to the next small patch of exposed soil farther out from the camp. Still no roots.

It took Jack over half an hour to find it, in the tenth patch he searched. And it was blending nicely into a loose slurry in Mac’s blender, needing only a little water as a base.

Within minutes, Jack had managed to insert a nasogastric tube through Frank’s nose, through his esophagus, and down into his throat. It was a procedure he had never performed before, except in VR simulations during his training. After securing the feeding tube, he hung the bag full of root slurry next to Frank’s IV bag, connected it to the NG-tube, and opened the port to allow the pale, pink concoction to trickle down the tube into Frank’s empty stomach.

Jack watched as the bag slowly emptied, wondering how long it had been since Frank had last eaten. Knowing that there was nothing more he could do besides wait, Jack returned to Maria’s medical logs, in search of more information.

* * *

The LRV was a lonely place without the sounds of people going about their daily routines. Jack sat in the wardroom, eating some of the Cetian root he had collected earlier. He tried to imagine the sounds of the crew. Maria and Laura watching old movies. Mac and Tony working out on the gym with Sara tossing wise-cracks at them as she rode on the exer-cycle. And finally Frank teasing Lynn, trying to get a rise out of her. But all he could hear was the whirring of the ventilation fans.