Flight of the Mystere (Part III) (Patreon)

Medical Bay: Biohazard Section

Doctor Azzan looked around the face of the unconscious man for a third time, as if the tall, thin Q’aab could hope that some new way of figuring the situation out would come to him. Nothing seemed to have changed, and no ideas materialized in his mind. When he tried to pry off the legs, the creature’s tail tightened around Lattimer’s neck. When he tried to pry off the tail, it tightened like ceramalloy cords and the man’s vitals plunged.

Once it had been determined that Lattimer’s condition would remain stable, and there was no way to give him any immediate help, Doctor Azzan had quarantined the patient and gone to the briefing with Commander Cairn and the rest of the crew that had been present at the derelict. The operations commander, OverLieutenant Savan, was sitting outside, trying to collect herself. She still wore her dusty armor.

“Anything?” she asked immediately, looking up at him and launching out of her chair. Doctor Azzan motioned for her to sit, and he did the same.

“Nothing yet,” he said, “We have no idea what we are up against. I know you already went through this with Commander Cairn, but perhaps you should tell me everything that happened, everything you saw, and what went wrong.” Ranya Savan sighed and sank back in her chair, seeming to notice for the first time that she was still in her armor. Her dark, brown eyes drifted away to a time that existed now only in memory-- and digital recording. She had recently seen that digital recording, and it had only reinforced the feeling of helplessness people face when remembering a bad situation that was since beyond repair. She told him what she knew in a dull voice, interrupted only by the arrival of first Ensign Bansan and the medic who had been with them in the cargo hold. Already interrogated, they were temporarily off duty pending an investigation. They felt too restless to wait in their quarters, and no one was feeling particularly social.

“So what are you going to do now, Doctor?” Ranya asked. Azzan grimaced.

“I have to try to do what I can,” he said, “even though I am not sure that there really is anything I can do. The only option I haven’t tried yet is surgery, and I was about to start that.” The medic and Bansan exchanged glances, the young intelligence Ensign looking particularly distraught. Ranya shifted in her chair.

“Well, if that is all that’s left, then that is all that’s left,” she said, picking herself up and motioning towards the end of the corridor. “I’d like to observe if I may, Doctor?”

“Of course,” he replied absently. All three of them moved together towards the operating suite observation room while the Doctor himself reentered the decontamination lock and donned fresh whites. Inside, he checked Lattimer’s condition. All was as he’d left it, he noticed with some disappointment. He looked at the small red light on his eyelens that informed him that the recorders were on.

“The creature continues to supply the patient with oxygen while maintaining its grip,” he said aloud to the recorders that followed his every move. “The creature’s grip, both legs and tail, is stunning. There is a tube of some sort extending deep into the patient’s chest cavity, the purpose of which I cannot figure out. It is neither taking nor-- as near as I can tell-- depositing anything.” He looked again at the scans, and internally, nothing had changed. He grimaced, motioning for his tray. Obediently, the medlab robot rolled its way towards him.

“Despite my misgivings, I have decided to attempt surgical removal of the creature. Whatever it is, it has staked its survival on this parasitic relationship with the patient.” He reached for a gleaming, black blade, a piece of finely cut obsidian that cut far sharper than any laser. With expert care he placed stainless steel drip deflectors around the creature’s bottommost left leg, the tail being too tight to reach under. He already had a good idea what would happen and was no happier about it than the man’s crewmates, watching from the observation gallery.

And now Doctor Azzan gave them the barest flicker of a glance as he looked over at the thick transparalloy window, the room sealed against contaminants, his own breathing the only sound in the protective suit he wore, as he steadied the black blade in his hands and moved towards his patient. With featherlike grace, he placed thumb and forefinger over the top of the area to be cut, and gently applied the scalpel.

Doctor Azzan, a skilled surgeon in the Central Navy with over thirty years of experience, was not prepared for what happened next. With a sputter, liquid poured from the creature’s wound and began eating at the blade. Momentarily stunned, he looked at the rapidly dissolving blade in his hands. He tossed it into a stainless steel pan as if it were about to bite him, and watched in shock as the liquid-- the thing’s blood?-- ran harmlessly down its own leg to drip onto the splash guards, and then into the collection pan where the remains of the scalpel sat. The obsidian blade was quickly ruined, and the pan itself began to discolor. A faint metallic odor filled the air around the table as Azzan began to realize that the steel pan was not going to last long. The bubbling acid showed no signs of stopping, it was going to drip through to whatever was below-- the medlab storage facility, he remembered somewhere.

Instantly, Azzan dove for the door, but not to leave-- rather, he opened one of the panels next to it. A row of controls was exposed, at the top of which there was a prominent round switch with a handle marked GRAVITIC CONTROL. He twisted it all the way to the left and instantly lost sensation of weight. He turned, his movements carefully coordinated through years of training to keep from spinning. Behind him, hovering in midair in small bubbles, the acid sat nearly motionless on its interrupted plunge to the floor. Almost motionless is not good enough, Azzan deduced, his mind projecting images of elusive flying acid balls floating into everything in the room. He turned off the air circulation as well.

“Go to engineering!” he barked towards the observation bay, “get an antigrav container!” The wide-eyed Ranya Savan sent Bansan running.

“Can we do anything?” she asked through the monitor. Azzan shook his head and looked around, checking for any more developing problems. A handful of small surgical instruments sat on the table, some of which were beginning to shift minutely. Mostly, however, things stayed where they were. The acid balls drifted, barely, but would not cause trouble provided the antigrav container got there in time. Azzan regretted not keeping one handy in the sickbay, but who would have guessed a need to capture floating balls of acid?

Bansan returned after what seemed an eternity. He handed the antigrav jar to Ranya, who stepped through the decontamination lock with it. Carefully, Azzan and Ranya captured the floating acid and held it in antigravity stasis within the container. Relieved, Azzan returned the cabin gravity to normal.

“So much for the surgical option,” he said regretfully. The creature on Lattimer’s face sat quietly. It had not even twitched.

Mess Hall 4D-- The Next Morning

Ranya smoothed back her short, red, still-wet hair and gazed at her reflection in her fourth cup of coffiene. She was glad that the image was a badly distorted one, she’d hate to think that she looked so bad. Still, after a night with almost no sleep, she could not see how she could justify looking any better. Tired and haggard, she had wakened and reported to duty, only to be told to return to standby. Pending an investigation, the section chief had said. It was becoming her mantra: Can you fly a mission, Ranya? Sorry, I am supposed to wait, pending an investigation. Ranya, I’m on fire, can you pour water on me? Sorry, but pending an investigation. . . She frowned and drank her coffiene, letting the bitterness and heat shock her into more wakefulness.

She blinked as her vision was suddenly filled with letters. The eyelens she wore on her left eye received a personal message for her from the ship’s AI. Report to Sickbay, it said simply. Any news, good or bad, would be welcome. She darted out the door and reached the medical section on the heels of the rest of her crew, alerted by the same message. Together, they piled in front of the observation bay to the biohazard suite. Sitting up on the table, pasty-faced and sweaty, was Lattimer-- with no trace of the alien face spider at all.

“Hey! About time you woke up!” Bansan whooped. Lattimer smiled weakly and waved at his friends.

“Good morning,” he croaked. “Sorry to keep you all waiting.”

“So how do you feel?” Ranya asked, trying to keep a professional detachment but failing. Her smile practically burst her face at the sight of Lattimer up and active again, without that nightmare affixed to him. Lattimer shook his head.

“I feel fine, except the doc here won’t let me have any food,” he said, indicating Doctor Azzan, who hovered nearby with a medical scanner. “I’m starving.”

“Understandable,” Azzan countered, “you’ve been without food for a couple of days. But the scans show that there is something lodged in your chest cavity and I don’t want you making a move out this door until we know for sure what it is.” Lattimer tried to wave him off, but made no move to get up.

“I heard there was some excitement,” he said, looking at them all.

“There’s an investigation going on,” Ranya informed him, “they’re looking into this whole cock-up. Who’s to blame and all,” she said, without adding that her ass was the one furthermost out on the branch.

“Well, I’m the prize son of a bitch,” Lattimer said, “I should have gotten out of there as soon as you said to and avoided the whole mess.”

“Don’t worry about that,” she insisted, “just get better. Then you can say your peace to the board of inquiry.” He nodded his head in understanding and turned to the doctor, asking for food to brought to him. Azzan sighed and repeated his insistence that Lattimer would just have to wait awhile. “Hey,” Ranya called, “as soon as this is over, I’ll treat you to all the top-quality steaks this tub has to offer,” she promised. The others chipped in with promises of beer, ice cream, or whatever else struck their imaginations. Lattimer held up his hands in mock surrender.

“Okay, okay,” he said, “I’ll take you all up on your promises. But for now, I need to know when I can get the hell out of here.” Azzan clasped his hands in front of him.

“Apparently, the residue is in your lungs. Have you had any trouble breathing?” he asked patiently. Lattimer inhaled and exhaled evenly.

“I feel okay,” he responded, “just hungry.” Azzan nodded.

“Well, I want to do some observation before opening you up. Putting you under right now might not be the best thing for you. So I’ll make you a deal,” he said, looking gravely at the weapons officer, “Order the meal of your choice for now and then you will have nothing else for at least eight hours. If you don’t show any symptoms, we’ll open you up and get that residue out of you.” Lattimer brightened.

“It’s a deal. Chops and eggs?”

“Anything you want,” Azzan insisted, smiling, “we’ll have it brought here. You’re not leaving the biofacility, though.”

“Breakfast in bed? When do I get the sponge bath from Nurse Adano?”

“Huh. First things first,” Azzan said, dismissing the comment and looking over at Ranya. “I’d like to show you something, if I could, Lieutenant,” he gestured for her to meet him inside the decon lock. After she had draped fresh whites over her uniform, Ranya followed the doctor through the service hatch to the biohazard storage lab. Two containers dominated the central table-- one, the grav container with the acid blood from earlier and the other--

“Ugh! That’s it?” she grunted, frowning in disgust. The face-hugger sat in a gravitic stasis of its own, unmoving, the legs and tail limp. “How did you get it off?” she asked, after examining it for a few seconds.

“I didn’t,” the doctor explained, “It just relaxed its grip and sloughed off on its own. Apparently, it died when it felt its mission was complete.” Ranya looked up at him, thinking about his words.

“And that mission was. . ?”

“I’m not sure,” Azzan said quietly, “but if my guess is correct, then it has to do with whatever it implanted in Lieutenant Lattimer’s body.” Ranya looked at him, her eyes asking the question she didn’t voice.

“Look,” he explained, “this thing came from an egg patch. On the video, there were hundreds of eggs, possibly more we didn’t see. Mass egg-laying is the survival tactic of a simple creature that expects a high mortality rate among its young. But I cannot recall seeing egg-laying creatures of this size before,” he indicated the spider-like creature in the container. “I am not a xeno-zoology expert, but some things are basic. Its behavior is parasitic, and acts like a giant insect. It has that blood-- or a defense layer-- to ensure its survival while gripping its victim. Whatever it is, it comes from a damn hostile environment. It’s tough, but it expects its young to be killed in mass quantities. Thus the egg fields.” Ranya thought for a moment, looking back through her memory at everything she had seen, and what little she knew about biology from school.

“So what does all this mean for Lattimer?” she asked, her eyes contacting Azzan’s from the other side of the table.

“If the creature is following the parasitic, insect-like activity that I am familiar with, then its purpose may well have been to use Lattimer as a host creature for larva of its own.”

“So that residue in his lungs. . .”

“--may well be another developing phase of the creature,” Azzan said gravely. Ranya shook her head, trying to clear the confusion. She indicated the stasis container and its gruesome contents.

“But this is the creature,” she insisted, “and now it’s dead. Why would a creature of any sort hatch from an egg, immediately grab another creature to act as a host, and then die as soon as it formed another egg? It would have to eat, uh, find a mate. . .” she trailed off, out of her element. She nervously slicked back her hair again. Azzan shrugged.

“The egg form is the first phase of the creature, the spider form probably some sort of transitional phase. It grabs a host, implants a more mature egg, and then dies. It appears to serve no other purpose. The implanted egg grows and forms a third phase, something we haven’t seen yet.” Ranya thought back to the events on the derelict alien ship. Suddenly, she inhaled sharply and could feel herself go pale.

“Oh, shit,” she whispered. Azzan nodded gravely.

“Indeed,” he said, “the alien in the chair.”

The image burned into Ranya’s mind-- the huge, hominid form alien, reclining-- now she knew why the giant was lying on its back, on what would have been an entry wound. There was no entry wound, she realized. The image in her memory blurred and easily became an image of Lattimer, his own ribs burst out as-- what? ate its way from within his chest.

“You haven’t told him?” she insisted.

“No. It is still only a hypothesis, but I feel a very rational one. I have no idea how long gestation is, but in the natural world we know the average can be days or weeks,” he reminded her. She dismissed the thought.

“That’s the world as we know. This is something different, you said so yourself.”

“Yes. I haven’t seen any parallels on any of the worlds of the Central Alliance. We know of other creatures built tougher than this, but they do not rely on multi-egg phases, or mass breeding. So we’re dealing with something highly adapted to extremely hostile conditions. That is why I wanted to get the thing out now, but I don’t know what effect that would have on him, so soon after waking up from the creature itself,” he explained with a nod towards the stasis container. Ranya nodded understanding.

“So when does he go into surgery?” she asked.

“Like I said, I want eight hours of observation to see if he is stable enough to go under. There are still some unknown toxins left in is blood, I assume left over from the creature’s paralysis. Believe me, I want to get that damn thing out of him as much as you do,” he gazed at the alien spider, still threatening even in death, “I can’t imagine what the next form of the creature may be, but if the indications I’ve seen so far support my theory, it must be one vicious bastard.”

Medical Bay-- Biohazard Section

Lieutenant Lattimer’s last words before going under anesthesia were a demand for a big meal as soon as he awoke. Doctor Azzan promised him anything he wanted, hiding his real concern under his biohazard protective mask. From the window, Ranya watched alongside Bansan, Ja’la, Khalil and Leeda. Ranya was surprised by the arrival of Commander Cairn as well, silently acknowledging the muffled greetings of the bomber crew as she took her place next to Ranya, with something approaching concern laid over her usually coldly neutral expression. Ranya locked her eyes instead on the figures of Doctor Azzan, nurse-Ensign Sharra Adona and another assistant she did not recognize. Once it was established that Lattimer was asleep, Azzan began the procedure.

“Patient is asleep and respirating normally, blood pressure and brainwave activity all normal for a healthy young human male in his mid-twenties. We will be attempting,” he said, speaking for the recorders, “to remove an alien cyst of an unknown nature, implanted in the left lower lung. Reference medlog M-one-two-zero-nine-two-five dot zero-seven-hundred, Doctor Azzan, Baiid, practicing.” Formalities finished, he stepped towards Lattimer and began cutting with another obsidian blade. Soon, the lung itself was exposed, Ranya watching with a clinical detachment.

“Doctor,” nurse Adona said, indicating the biomonitors. Lattimer’s heart rate had increased as the unnatural bulge in the lung was exposed, and he began to perspire. Azzan hesitated. A slight movement in the lung caught his eye. The ‘cyst’ was shifting. Azzan bent to make his final incision.

“My theory that we are dealing with another larval form of the creature is--” Doctor Azzan never got to finish his sentence. A stain of blood washed through the chest cavity as if a faucet had been turned on. Silvery, needle-like teeth appeared first as Adona swore and Azzan stumbled backwards. Erupting from Lattimer’s chest was the alien’s third form, complete with arms, legs, and elongated, eyeless head dripping with blood and mucus. The thing squirmed out of Lattimer’s body, the biomonitor now reading flatlines all across. The rest of Lattimer’s crew pressed against the observation window, yelling incomprehensibly. Ranya and Commander Cairn were cycling through the decontamination lock.

The creature hissed at Doctor Azzan, who held his scalpel in a defensive stance. Nurse Adona did the same while the assistant pulled the safety ring from a fire retardant canister and aimed the spray nozzle towards the alien. For a second, time froze, then the creature sprang into action, startled by the opening of the decontamination lock. Ranya and Commander Cairn charged in, Ranya with her Navy-issue energy bayonet crackling, Commander Cairn producing a palm blaster. They dove for the alien, missing it by centimeters as it charged for the air circulation vent, tearing the grill off with strength beyond what its small size indicated. Cairn fired as the bloody tail slipped into the darkness, the faint scratching of its claws disappearing into the duct.

“Where does this go!?” Cairn demanded, leveling a laser-beam glare at Doctor Azzan.

“Filters!” he replied, his voice uncharacteristically emotional, “it’s a closed circulation and purification system-- isolated from the rest of the ship’s atmosphere.”

“Small favors,” Cairn muttered, keying her personal comm. “Security level Red One, intruder alert, authorization meta-two-zero.” The corridors of the Mystere were bathed in reddish light as ship’s security personnel began positioning themselves at corridor intersections and other choke points. Rifles and armor were distributed, and fire teams began checking in as soon as they had their positions covered.

Ranya, meanwhile, watched silently while Doctor Azzan, shaken but still at his duty, pronounced Lieutenant Lattimer dead.

(To be continued...)