After the shocking revelation that Miles seemed to have some sort of immunity to the ktonshi contagion, Jophixa decided we couldn’t sit and monitor Eve’s Blessing indefinitely. We needed to either confirm the explosion had dealt with the ktonshi that were down there, or find a way to finish the job. She was adamant that we weren’t going to leave any of them behind if we could eliminate them, even if we had to convince Major Kintzel to use another of the Sagittarius missiles to do it.

  You can probably imagine that Gertrude was not an easy sell on the idea. They only had three of those missiles left, and with blumintum being as rare as it was, there was no telling when any more of them could be manufactured. She was quite firm that she would not use another one unless we knew 100% for certain that there were still ktonshi down on the planet, and they could be taken out with one shot.

  That’s what had me spending my duty shift in the shuttle bay with Frankie half dismantled on the deck.

  After Gertrude had stormed out of Jophixa’s office, I had suggested to the commander that we could make use of Frankie again for some recon. “Commander, I know it’d be quicker and easier to just launch one of those missiles.” I told her, “but it wouldn’t take that much to send Frankie down there to check things out.”

  She let out a huge breath and visibly forced herself to calm down. “You’re right, Thomas.” she said finally. “All I can think about is that we have our first known instance of someone who has survived the contagion without turning into one of them, and I want to get him somewhere safe so we have a chance at figuring out how he survived. I don’t want to turn the kid into a lab rat Thomas, but this is monumental! And our facilities on board are not up to the task of doing the research. We need to get him somewhere with proper facilities, like the station.”

  “His parents aren’t likely going to agree with that Jo.” I told her, shaking my head, “Unless you plan to take them along. Are you prepared to host three humans on board the station for an indefinite period?”

  “If it means ending the threat of the contagion, yes.”

  After a bit more discussion, she agreed to my suggestion to use Frankie for a recon mission, once again with Stacy in primary control, with me riding shotgun. I’d convinced her to give me forty-eight hours to make modifications to the droid, and I had plans to beef the thing up with some stealth features, better comms gear, and of course an upgraded sensor suite.

  I’d even set up a holo feed so that Miles could watch what I was doing if he was bored.

  Tindron had been spending a great deal of time with the boy since he’d woken up, volunteering for the task since he was the closest thing we had to a ship's councillor. All his studies involving sophont-computer interfacing had involved a fair amount of time studying psychology and habits, so it just made sense all around.

  But the kid was going to need time to decompress and process what had happened as well as talk about things. So we made sure he had access to some games, books, and now the feed to watch what I was working on. Surprisingly, he spent a fair amount of time asking me questions. It was while I was debating on a mounting point for the high gain sensor antenna that he giggle-snorted through the Q-pod’s comms unit.

  I looked up at the holo-sensor and raised an eyebrow, “What’s so funny?”

  “That dish thing you have in your hand.” he said, still laughing to himself, “If you mounted it point up on the droid, it would look so much like a character from a holo-comic I read called Void Samurai.”

  Frowning, I flipped the sensor antenna over and held it to the top of Frankie’s ‘head’, which set Miles off laughing even harder.

  Stacy? Any chance of finding an example of what Miles might be referring to? I sent out mentally, tilting my head to the side and giving the droid a critical look. I had to admit that it did give the bot a kind of cheesy kung fu look from some of the adaptions of old flat vid martial art films.

  Already on it cutie-pie! She responded immediately, sending an image directly to my ocular cortex through the implant. It seems to be a very big thing with the kids these days, and a fair number of adults. The voice actors are scheduled to be at something called EuropaCon in a couple months. Tickets are so in demand they’re being scalped for ten times their original value.

  The image she sent me did indeed bear a bit of a resemblance to Frankie, if I mounted the antenna the way I was holding it. The character from the holo-comic was nowhere near as technically realistic, resembling something you’d see in an old episode of Power Scouts or something. But there was enough there that I could see what Miles saw. And it definitely gave me ideas.

  “Okay Miles,” I laughed, and reached for my ten millimeter spanner, “If the commander gives me shit for how this looks, I’m blaming you. You know that, right?”

  “Hey!” he shouted, though he was still laughing, “way to throw a guy under the bus!”

  Hehe, I thought to Stacy, I’m laying odds that it’s a damn good thing to give him something to laugh about right now. I can likely get Tindron to back me up on that.

  The design might even be marketable with that look baby-cakes! She chortled back at me, I’ve already got a couple companies interested in my new and improved OptiMaster-killer. They’re in a bidding war! All profits will, of course, go towards reestablishing the giobhioni as a species in this time period!

  A grin split my face as I got to work. How could Jo even argue with that?

  Several hours later, having gotten lost in the work, I found myself closing up the access panel to Frankie’s new and improved communications suite, featuring dual node ansible connection to keep the control signals from being detected, an internal self destruct to ensure said ansible connections were not recoverable, and just for paranoia’s sake, encryption designed by a sentient AI the size of a small planetoid. And it was all sealed in a well armored casing.

  The upgraded sensor package was mostly integrated as well. So my biggest job left was retuning the power core and thrust emitters to make them as low visibility to sensors as I could. Part of that was going to involve some redesign to the external panels, which Stacy was working on while I was doing the dirty work.

  You can do some dirty work on me Tommy-baby!

  “Down girl!” I muttered under my breath, “we’ve got a young observer!”

  The sound of a raspberry being blown, rather wetly, flooded through my implant and I just shook my head. Don’t make me engage privacy mode next time Tratsa and Boudya spend the night at the same time.

  Nooo! And the image of a very cute anime looking space goblin giving me big puppy dog eyes and a massive pout. I’ll be good.

  Smiling, I stood up and backed away from the droid, giving it a long analytical look before picking up a tablet. “Alright Miles, time to run some diagnostic checks on the new Frankie before I start on the power core, grav field emitters, and main thrusters.” I glanced up at the holo-sensor again. “If you have any interesting ideas about those, would love to hear them.”

  There was nothing but silence, and for a moment I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep, but then Stacy whispered through my implant. I think something’s wrong, baby cakes, he’s gone really pale and is staring off into space with his eyes kind of…bulging…

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Fuck! Let Tratsa and Tindron know! I told her, then started walking over towards the Q-pot, “Hey Miles, you alright in there? You went really quiet, and I was really hoping you’d continue helping me with Frankie, you know?”

  Silence.

  Shattered Stars, I’m an engineer, not a damned psychologist! I thought to myself. I knew at least a little of what the kid was going through, but what the hell did I know about soothing trauma? I could barely handle my own, how was I gonna help Miles.

  They’re on their way! Stacy informed me, Tindron says to just keep talking to him til they get there.

  By this time I’d made it to the Q-pot and had started leaning on it. “Come on Miles, talk to me.” I continued, “Darkest Void…kid, I know a bit about what you’re going through right now. You might not believe it, hell, I don’t even believe it myself most of the time, and the whole crew here has had my back on multiple occasions when I just…fell apart.”

  My head felt heavy and exhausted and my eyes were starting to burn. “I…I…Miles, a lot of good people died on my watch once. I was the engineer in charge of the operation, I was supposed to be making the safety calls. I knew the ship wasn’t safe yet…”

  A muffled thump sounded from the q-pod as I let my head fall and bounce lightly off the side of it. “But the captain, he falsified my authorization, sent them over there anyway. I knew he was skeevy, Miles. I took the job in the first place to try and keep him from endangering the crew! But…they all died. And he tried to pin the whole thing on me.”

  Footsteps behind me, and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Tratsa was pulling up the kid’s vitals directly from the pod. As she was doing that, I felt a strong arm wrap around my shoulders and give them a squeeze. A glance through tear blurred vision saw blue skin, and I knew it was Tindron.

  “The inquiry proved otherwise, but I still blamed myself for years after it happened, Miles.” I shook my head, “I still do, at times, but I’m working on that with help. It wasn’t my fault, and it wasn’t yours, no matter what your brain is telling you right now. You don’t have to talk to me about what happened, not now, not later. But talk to me kid, just talk, okay?”

  The silence continued for a moment, and I glanced over at Tratsa. She looked concerned about what she was seeing on the medical telemetry. “His neural activity is going higher than I’ve ever seen!” she exclaimed, “He might be going into a seizure!”

  She had her hands on the Q-Pod’s safety seal, her knuckles gone white, and her ears high and rigid. “Clear the shuttle bay! We’ll seal the deck before I crack this thing open!”

  Tindron and I glanced at each other around Tratsa. I really didn’t want to abandon the kid. I wanted to be here for him. Something told me he would need someone who understood. But there was so much risk with the contagion. It wouldn’t be right Boudya alone if both of us were exposed. I hated it, I knew following Tratsa’s order was the right thing to do.

  We were about to step away when I caught a very quiet voice whispering through the intercom, “I hear them…”

  I reached out and grabbed Tratsa’s hand to stop her from popping the seals. “Hold on…” I said, then turned back to the pod. “Who do you hear, Miles?”

  His voice remained barely a whisper when he replied, “Them. My friends, the colonists…they’re still down there in the tunnels. They… Oh stars… What’s happening to them, something is eating them from the inside.”

  My eyes went wide, and I looked over at Tratsa and Tindron to see the mirrored expressions of shock on their faces. Was this - was Miles experiencing some sort of telepathic link to the remaining colonists? But there’s no such thing as telepaths, the military has done countless searches and experiments to find or create them! It’s never worked. And no species we’ve ever encountered has ever shown a single hint of actual telepathy…

  “NO!” Miles screamed out, punctuating his exclamation with a smash of his fist against the side of the pod, “no no no! It’s those things! They are becoming those things! You have to save them!”

  Aw shit! I winced, gritting my teeth as my mind raced for something to say. I was really hoping we wouldn’t have to deal with this until after, or that his friends wouldn’t still be alive down there. It would have been a greater mercy for them to have been killed in the missile blast. But now we were going to have to explain this situation and try to keep him from having another seizure.

  “Miles, listen to me.” Tindron stepped in, speaking in an incredibly soothing voice. “We are already preparing to go down there and do what we can for them, but -” he took a long breath, closing his eyes before continuing, “we don’t have a cure for what’s happening to them. The only thing we know how to do right now is to help them to not lose themselves to the things taking them over. We can stop their pain, stop the horror. I know it’s not what you want to hear, Miles, but I’m not gonna hide the truth from you.”

  An anguished scream tore out of the intercom, causing us all to cringe at the soul-deep rage and grief that came with it - we could feel it.

  “No! You have to do something!” he yelled, “Get them out of there.”

  “Miles,” Jophixa’s bone weary voice came from behind me. “I promise you, if I had a way to save your friends, I would do it. I would fly the Elegance down there, putting the entire crew at risk, endangering all of my people, if we had anything we could do to prevent what’s happening to them down there. I would go down there alone, unarmed, if that was what was needed, if we had a cure! Just like I would if it was my own mother down there.

  “But there’s no cure, not yet. We can only give your friends peace. I’m sorry Miles, it's the only thing we have.”

  Deep wracking sobs came from the intercom as Jophixa continued, “What we can do is promise to give you a chance to be part of shoving a kilo of high explosive down those monsters’ void damned throats! You can help us do what we can to prevent as many as possible from the same fate. You just need to hold on Miles, okay? And we’ll get your parents on the comm as soon as we can!”

  Tratsa reached up and tapped a control on the Q-pod interface, then turned to us, “The mic is muted.” she said, then looked at Jophixa, “I recommend a mild sedative Commander. His neural activity has started to drop back to normal, but there’s still some anomalous behavior there. It might relate to his statements implying some sort of telepathy, but it could relate to the contagion or his neurological health. Rest would do him good.”

  At the commander’s nod, Tratsa tapped the intercom control again to reactivate the microphone. “Miles? If you’re okay with it, I’m going to give you a mild sedative, alright?” she said in an incredibly soothing voice, one I’d heard her use a few times after I’d woken up from nightmares. “It’ll help you rest, and quiet the things in your head. You were right on the edge of a seizure earlier, I know you’re familiar with how that drains you.”

  “The Toren’s Syndrome,” he said weakly, “I hadn’t…hadn’t had a seizure in four years ‘cause of the meds… Must… must be the stress.”

  “Yup,” she said, a gentle, motherly smile on her face, “you’ve had enough stress in the last few days, nobody can fault you for the meds not working. So just relax, okay? I’ll be monitoring the pod, and be just a call away, as will Tindron and Thomas. We’re all really worried about you.”

  “But my friends…”

  She was already entering the commands to inject the pod with sedative gas as she said, “Shh, we’re doing what we can for them, don’t you worry.”

  There was a sleepy “Okay” in response, then silence. We all looked at each other in silence for a few minutes while we waited to see if sedatives took hold. Jophixa looked incredibly haggard as she stood there, her ears drooping, and the usual healthy shade of green having faded from her skin to something much paler.

  Finally, Tratsa gave a nod, and let out a sigh. “I think he’s dropped off to sleep.” she told us, “It’ll be really good if we can get all this taken care of before he wakes up. Let him grieve, instead of having him agonizing over what’s happening to them.”

  I saw Tratsa nod sharply and then turn to me, “Get that droid ready for operation as quickly as you can.” she ordered, “Pull Boudya off duty shift in engineering if you have to, with us parked here just staring at that damned crater down there, she’s just running routine diagnostics. This is top priority.”

  “Sepaq, Commander!” I replied, straightening up and saluting.

  “Stacy, you and Ms Aacen get that void blasted Admiral on the comms pronto. Use whatever trick you have hidden up your virtual sleeve, but we need a way to coordinate with her and fast! And if you can’t get me Admiral LeBeau before we blow that ktonshi nest down there to the Void’s core, I want Miles’ parents on comms. He deserves to speak with them, even if it’s not prudent right now.”

  “On it Boss!” Stacy said smartly, “Reallocating resources to that task as we speak. You may need to address the Targarian Snoglantir in the room however.”

  “Excuse me?” Jophixa asked, and we all looked around, only to find Giselle and Gertrude standing not too far away, leaning on a loading cart, and watching us with intent curiosity. “Strenxik!” she spat out, as we all realized she’d addressed Stacy as if she were the real person she was - within earshot of the twins; Something we’d been attempting to avoid.

  “Shatter and Void it!” she said after a moment, “We don’t have time to keep dancing around it. Thomas, if they ask, explain it. I’m heading to try and get some sleep before I fall over.”

  And with that, she turned on her heel and marched off.

  The Salvager’s Plague

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