Opening his eyes for the first time in what felt like weeks, Miles was enveloped in confusion. Breaking through the fog of sleep, his mind moved through the realization that he was not in his room on Eve’s Blessing. The memories of the hideous creatures in the derelict facility burst into his consciousness like an invading hoard. His heart clenched in terror for a split second.

  Then the sights that surrounded him registered, bringing another wave of confusion as he confronted the memory of his quarantine after the strange robot snatched him off the surface and brought him aboard the gracefully curved ship that shimmered with lights. But he wasn’t in that confined little quarantine pod any longer. He was lying on a med-bed, looking up at a diagnostic display as the various electronic sounds echoed off the walls around him.

  He tried to force himself upright, but a small, green hand pushed firmly at the center of his chest. “Easy now Miles, you’ve been sedated for a couple of Terran days now.” A gentle voice in a strange accent came from beside him, “I’m sorry we had to keep you under that long, but it was necessary. The good news is, as you can see, you’ve passed the quarantine. So just relax.”

  “Will I be able to call my parents soon?” looking over to see the short, curvy, humanoid woman with the large pointy ears he’d been introduced to as Tratsa.

  “You can ask the Commander and Admiral when they pop in.” the alien doctor told him with a faint smile, “They should be here before too much longer. They stopped by earlier as the commander began showing the Admiral around the ship, but you were still unconscious. I understand Thomas and Tindron are arguing about who gets to give you the tour, now that you’re out of quarantine. Those two seem to have taken a shine to you, young man.”

  Miles laid back on the medbed and let out a deep sigh. “I just want to call my folks.”

  “I can only imagine.” Tratsa said sympathetically. “And it won’t be long now, I’m sure. Are you thirsty? I can get you some water.”

  “Yes, please.”

  The travel bottle of water she brought to him was filled with crisp, sweet water like he hadn’t had in years. The water recycler that terraforming colonies like Eve’s Blessing used never quite got the taste of water the same as it was from a fully matured colony. Not like water pulled from aquifers, or purified rainwater. But this water did, and the fact it was from a ship that had been in space for who knows how long distracted him enough that grief of what happened at Eve’s Blessing didn’t assault him.

  The doctor handed him a couple of ration bars with the water, and sat back down at a lab bench to stare at a holomonitor filled with medical readouts. He’d studied a wide range of topics during his schooling, especially basic biology and medicine, but he couldn’t make any sense of what she was looking at. Granted, most of it was in a language he couldn’t read, but even the diagrams made no sense to him.

  Until one term popped up in the text. “Toren’s Syndrome” and he was just about to ask her about it when he heard voices just outside the room.

  “I have to say Commander,” a slightly smokey, woman’s voice was saying, “I’m a bit startled by how accessible your ship is to people outside your own stature. Apart from vessels built in a cooperative project between ourselves and other species, we mostly see ergonomics set for only one’s native species. The benastians, for example, find our ships cramped, and we have issues sometimes even reaching controls on some of theirs.”

  There was a throaty chuckle. “We were quite often forced to work with mixed crews during the long conflict, but don’t fool yourself into thinking everything on board is so cross species friendly. Remember what Thomas told you about the tantaja tubes. Boudya or tindron would have one hell of a time maneuvering in them, despite them being so slender. Your marines back in the shuttle bay would probably need to be cut out of them.”

  “And Mr. Aacen even complained about feeling like a worm burrowing through dirt, I remember. Still, so much of your ship is so accommodating. I’m going to be reporting up the chain on this for sure.”

  The Medbay’s door slid open and the giobhioni commander stepped in - a tall, silver haired human woman in a Commonwealth Admiral’s uniform at her side. “Ah! I see our young guest is awake!” the commander exclaimed with a shark toothed smile. If it hadn’t been for the conversations over the holomonitor with her, said smile might have caused him to dive for a hiding place.

  “Been awake for a short while now, attempting to read over my shoulder.” The doctor informed her.

  “I wasn’t…” Miles stammered.

  “Oh hush, patients do it all the time,” she waved a hand in dismissal, “Especially curious youngsters who have been cooped up for an extended time. Nothing on the monitor was anything you shouldn’t have seen.”

  “Youngsters seem to be the same galaxy wide.” The silver haired admiral chuckled. “Some of us never grow out of it.”

  “You’d be the one to know, Admiral.” Commander Jophixa grinned

  “I told you before, please call me Thea until we're discussing official business.” The woman turned to give Miles a penetrating stare, “That goes for you too, young man. I’ve heard a bit about you from the crew of this ship, and it’s all good things. I want you to know that no matter what, everything that happens in the near future is for your protection, alright?”

  “Yes ma’am.” Miles said nervously, “will I be able to contact my parents? Doc said I had to wait to talk to you and the commander.”

  “Of course you can,” the admiral smiled, “We just need to talk about a few things first. We’re also just a bit outside of real time comms distance, even with hypercomm priority. And it’ll be a bit before any of our ships can get underway.”

  “There may be a way we can arrange that call sooner.” Commander Jophixa put in, “We have one of our own relays enroute to a location to facilitate a real time link, but even that will take a bit of time. Sorry Miles, the last couple days have been a bit of a cluster-” she cleared her throat then, “a bit of a mess, but I put priority on the relay as soon as I realized we’d be stuck here for a while.”

  That was more information that they’d given him the last time he’d asked about calling his parents. At that point they’d just given what felt like a half baked excuse, but this felt more genuine, more real. Still, he peered at the two women with no small amount of suspicion. “You promise? This isn’t just an excuse like last time?”

  The admiral glanced at Jophixa with a raised eyebrow. “I’m sorry about that Miles, and it wasn’t entirely a fabrication. There was a lot happening at the time, and hell, the real time commlink was still out of the question even then. But I promise, we’ll get you in touch with your parents as quickly as we can.”

  “Alright, but you better make good.”

  Somewhat surprisingly, while Jo was giving Admiral LeBeau the 2 tic tour of the ship, and after helping unload the first batch of parts and supplies from Void’s Cutlass, Gertrude joined Boudya and I in engineering. “The Admiral is likely to be awhile with your commander,” she informed me when I asked her about it, “and while I could do some work on Cutlass, she’s operational enough as is. I figured if I lend a hand helping you get Elegance moving again, we could get back after those eight legged freaks that much sooner.”

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  “Won’t say no to help, especially not such…” Stacy started, but cut off when I growled mentally at her. “But just for clarity, the ktonshi have ten legs, not eight.”

  Gertrude rolled her eyes. “I was referencing an old flatvid movie that my sister forced me to watch the other day. It was a cheesy flick all about giant spiders rampaging back on Earth, eating anyone they came across. You might remember Giselle saying something about it back at Eve’s Blessing.”

  “Right!” Stacy exclaimed, “I’d wanted to correct her about it at the time also, but there was just a bit too much going on. You bags of mostly dirty water get distracted in such situations, so I decided to leave it alone instead. Didn’t want to mess up rescuing Miles after all.”

  I chuckled at her description of biological life, my A.I. friend was not such a stranger to twentieth century human entertainment media herself. It wasn’t her first time making such references.

  “Well, as Stacy said, I won’t turn down help.” I put in, just to head off any possible argument between them, “We’ve got a lot to get repaired, and I’m pretty certain that as soon as your admiral is finished with the commander, she’ll be breathing down my neck. So let’s get cracking.”

  Repairing the coolant system wasn’t an overly complex process, just a long hard slog. About the only thing different between the Elegance’s system and that of your average commonwealth ship was the chemical formula for the coolant itself. Once you knew the conduits in question delivered coolant, the repair process didn’t require any species specific knowledge to get done.

  The wonderful part about Gertrude volunteering to help out, (which I did notify Jo about, for the record. I’m not stupid.) was that even with her sculpted physique, she was still small enough to move through the tantaja tubes as much as I was. Misery loves company, as they say, and I very much enjoyed the fact I wouldn’t need to be the only one belly crawling through the bowels of the ship tracking down any errant leaks. It would speed the process up incredibly.

  It was about three hours later that Jophixa called a meeting in the mess. I’d managed to slip into the zone after about half an hour of working my way through the conduits, and the all-decks announcement snapped me out of it with such a start that I only just managed to avoid bouncing my head off a power junction. I was feeling just a touch annoyed at being broken out of my headspace; Call me a crotchety old man if you want, but it always got me grouchy. I loved getting into that grove where time slips away as you work.

  It mollified me a bit that I hadn’t given myself another concussion, however. Maybe my reflexes were adapting to being a ship's engineer, instead of just a salvager.

  The mess hall felt a little more crowded than usual when Boudya, Gertrude and I walked in and grabbed seats. With the twins, Miles, Admiral LeBeau and her aide all present, it by no means was standing room only, but gave the room a feeling of fullness that it generally didn’t get with only one or two of us at a time using it.

  Jo and the Admiral were sitting at the end of the main table, near the room’s primary holomonitor, waiting patiently for the last of us to be seated.

  “Alright everyone,” Jo began, “We’ll try to keep this short so we can all get back to work getting Elegance moving again.

  “First, thanks to Admiral LeBeau, our stockpile of materials for the ship's minifac have been replenished. We’ll be set for fabricating any parts we end up needing for at least a while, as long as we can avoid any damage - or projects - that use up the more exotic stores. Yes, Thomas, I know you want to rebuild Frankie, I have earmarked materials specifically for that.

  “Secondly, it’s been decided that Giselle and Gertrude will continue to be stationed with us for the time being. There is a good chance we’re going to be operating within Commonwealth space while we are dealing with the ktonshi, so having Commonwealth officers with us would help smooth over any issues we have with any SysSec personnel.”

  She paused and glanced at the Admiral, and the silver haired head of fleet intelligence cleared her throat before speaking. “Major, I’ve arranged for you and your sister to both have your IDs flagged with FC-6e status until further notice.”

  I saw both of the Kintzel’s blink in surprise, Giselle opened her mouth to say something, but the Admiral cut her off. “For those of you who are unaware of fleet command flags, this means that the two of them will be seen as operating under my direct authority. Anyone gives them any trouble during your mission, they’ll just need to check their security clearance and know that to stand in the way will bring a load of shit down on their heads. It'll take them a month to dig themselves out.

  “I want to assign a small battlegroup to escort you, but Commander Throhx rightfully reminded me that a single ship can as easily avoid trouble as a battlegroup can overpower it. Thankfully, however, I now have access to that wonderful comms-unit your Ambassador provided me. I’ll have it monitored around the clock, just sound off and I’ll have ships on the way to assist.”

  “The last thing to bring up,” Jophixa declared, “is regarding our young guest, Mr. West. The admiral and I had quite a long discussion about the situation, Miles, especially in light of the fact that you are, in the four thousand years the giobhioni have been fighting the ktonshi, the only being we know of who has ever survived being infected with their contagion.”

  “Commander, I-” Tratsa started to object. But Jophixa cut her off.

  “Admiral LeBeau and I told him the truth of the matter earlier Tzaki.” she said calmly, “It needed to be done before we let him contact his parents, especially considering the decisions that needed to be made.”

  “Sending you back to your parents just isn’t an option, Miles, I’m sorry.” LeBeau said at that point, “For several reasons, but they all come down to the risk. If word leaks out that you are immune to the contagion, we’ll need you somewhere safe. If it isn’t the ktonshi that comes looking for you to make sure we can’t develop protection against it, it could very well be Fisch and his like, with their own motives.

  “We’re going to do our best to make sure your parents are kept safe as well, not to mention anyone else with Toren’s syndrome, since that’s our best guess as to the reason for your immunity. If it were up to me, I’d keep you onboard Titan’s Whisper with me, surrounded by a team of marines, but your parents objected to keeping you under what amounts to house arrest.”

  “There is another reason for that being a bad idea, Admiral.” Stacy cut in over the mess hall’s PA. Jophixa frowned at her interjection. As far as I knew, we’d still been trying to keep Stacy’s status as a sentient AI a secret from LeBeau, so I found myself worried as well. “In light of recent events, you cannot guarantee he’d be safe even on your ship. You had infiltrators damned near cause you to be lost in hyperspace. Until you can be sure there are no other security concerns, Miles would be in danger there.”

  LeBeau’s expression turned stormy, and I thought for a moment her reactor was about to go critical, but her next words surprised all of us. “I hate to admit it, but you’re damned right Stacy. Until I can get a colonoscopy level vetting done on every single one of my people, I don’t dare bring someone as important as Miles on board the Whisper. And I owe you immensely for getting us out of that jam.”

  She turned and looked at Jophixa, “I know all about your ambassador, commander. She read me in on her identity when she offered her assistance in getting us out of hyperspace. And exchange of trust, you could say. Don’t worry, I know how to keep a secret.”

  “She’s an important part of this crew, so I hope so.” Jo replied with a scowl that told me Stacy was in for a dressing down in private later. I was planning to do the same. It was a horrible risk she took, letting the admiral know what she was. “Back to the subject at hand however; My initial suggestion was to take you back to our closest station. It’s well defended and hidden, you’d likely be the safest you could ever be while there. Concern was raised about shipping you off somewhere with no familiar faces, not even a species you were familiar with for dozens of light years.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think I’d like that.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Tindron and your parents both figured, after all that’s happened.” When Jo mentioned him, I glanced over, and Tindron was nodding with a sympathetic smile directed towards the young man. “So, the only solution we could all agree on was that you would stay here, aboard the Elegance. At least until such a time as we can make sure you won’t be in any danger.”

  Miles’ eyes went wide when he heard that. “Here? But what about…”

  “I know the situation won’t be ideal.” Jo explained. “This isn’t a luxury liner, no deep space cruise. Your quarters will be small, and there will be no monkey business with our benastians. We will make sure you can contact your parents regularly, and you’ll get a chance to learn about our technology. Tindron mentioned you were interested in such things.”

  A smile grew on the boy’s face, “I still get to talk to my parents? And maybe…could I learn how to fly the ship?”

  I couldn’t help it, I let out a laugh, “Sounds like he’s after your job Toftri!”

  The Salvager’s Plague

  Ko-Fi or on