Mass Effect

“Who’s Fortinbras?” Borbala chimed in. They ignored her.

Yorrik sighed and settled some of his weight onto his rear legs. “Exhausted explanation: We cannot know exactly how long the virus lived inside the people in cryostasis, but it was a long time. Years. Decades. Centuries perhaps. No virus in the history of the universe has had so long to replicate, even if it was slowed by the cold, without outside interference, or treatment, or the host dying. It got a doting childhood in their bloodstreams. Protected. Nurtured. It could grow up so strong. Find the perfect solution to a virus’s only problem: how to live and spread. Sorrowfully: I am babbling. I cannot help it. Deep depression: If I had eezo, that would at least be a start.”

“Eezo?” asked the batarian sharply.

“Glumly: It is a mutagen. If we had enough of it, which we do not, and we could find a person who was immune on board the Keelah Si’yah, which we have not yet, it might be possible to use the mutagen to engineer a retrovirus from the blood of the immune patient. Anyone who had come in contact with Fortinbras but survived would have viral markers in their blood, antibodies that had successfully fought off the virus. With a full gene-viral lab, which we also do not have, I could use eezo to ‘teach’ a copy of the original virus to infect the cells of others as normal, but then obliterate the virus within the same way the immune person’s body did. The retrovirus would unzip the original virus and leave it dormant at least, purged at best. But this is a recipe for which our larders are quite empty. We would need enough eezo, and we would need to test everyone on board who has been exposed. And we would need the Nexus, because the equipment in here is as useful in making a retrovirus as a rock in making an omelette. And you’re about to take my microscope, which is the only thing in here that gives sensible instructions on how to do anything.”

Borbala Ferank was chewing mercilessly on the inside of her mouth. She kicked the floor with the toe of her boot.

Irit Non spoke up. “There’s eezo in the engines,” she mused. “A lot of it.”

Qetsi’Olam came to life. She had been listening, or not listening, pressing her hand against the micro-tears on the small of her back, as though her hand could save her, could rewind time and make her whole. She shook her head. “We’d be dead in the water. Gutting the engines of eezo would leave us a drifting hulk out here. We have no way of contacting the Nexus—”

“Senna is making good progress,” Anax interrupted. “This is our third lot of supplies for him.”

“That’s as may be, but even if he gets the long-range comms on again, and we can raise the Nexus, by the time anyone could get to us we’d all have starved to death out here. I’ve already set a distress message on all frequencies. There’s been no response yet. And you’d be asking them to bet years on a rescue. They’d rather just cut us loose. What difference would it make, really, if a bunch of quarians, drell, elcor, hanar, volus and bloody batarians never show up? Hell, they’d probably prefer it. Less messy.”

“Protestation: It doesn’t matter. We do not know of a single immune specimen on board. It may be no one. A virus that can jump species like rope may have a fatality rate of 100%. You would have to get blood from everyone who is awake, and we would have to put it through Horatio for testing until we found someone. In any sufficiently large population, there should be a few people with natural immunity. But are we a sufficiently large population? It’s not a needle in a haystack, it’s a needle in a galaxy.”

“What else are we supposed to do?” barked Irit Non. “Lie down and die? It’s the engines or death. A distress call is better than choking to death on your own fluids. Unless anyone has any red sand?” The horrendously addictive drug was packed with eezo, which was what made it feel so good—and what killed you, if you used it long enough. “I thought not. We were all starting with a clean slate, after all. Well done, us.”

The captain popped her fist against a wall panel and opened a mainframe access port. Yorrik was surprised she knew the ship so well—but then, he had barely glanced at it. He had been rewriting Lady Macbeth’s last monologue in his head as he boarded, full of dreams, full of the idea of distant stars all applauding for him. A fool he had been. A motley fool. Qetsi twisted a few wires together, and then a few more. She interrupted the cycling broadcast they had all quickly learned to ignore and unhear and addressed the ship on the mercifully still-functional public address system.

Attention, Keelah Si’yah. Hello, everyone. This is your captain… again. Please remain calm. Form an orderly group and proceed to medbay for treatment. I repeat: Please remain calm, form an orderly group, and proceed to medbay for treatment. Be patient, my friends, and we will see our new worlds yet.

Yorrik groaned. He wished she hadn’t done that. It would not be orderly. Why did she have to use the word treatment? Why could they not go, leave him alone? The nausea was building in his stomachs. They could not see him succumb. They had to go. They had to go.

Borbala Ferank looked up to the ceiling of the medbay and shook her head. Her three eyes blinked in succession, then all shut, as though she hated herself for what she was about to do.

“You need eezo?” she mumbled. “I can make eezo happen.”

15. RESOURCE EXHAUSTION

“You’re a little liar,” said Borbala Ferank sweetly as they descended toward the cargo hold again. Which was to say, descended into pestilent hell again. “You lied to that quarian about Oleon. Or you lied to me. But either way, you’re the most beautiful little liar I’ve ever seen.”

Anax Therion smiled faintly. “And you are the soul of truth?” she said archly.

“But you do it so smoothly. When I lie I have ticks and tells all over the place, Grandfather always said so. But not you. It just pours out of you like honey.”

“Hey,” a wheeze hissed out of the dark outside the cargo bay doors. “You sick?”

A volus emerged from the shadows. The light of his turmeric-colored goggles illuminated a bloody handprint on the door. At least Anax thought it was blood. It could have been that black, awful vomit. It didn’t matter, she supposed.

“If you’re sick, I got a cure. Six food rations, that’s all I ask, and you’ll be right as rain on Irune in the wintertime.”

“Six?” scoffed the batarian. “The hanar were selling cures for four two hours ago.”

“Four then!” the volus sputtered. “Hanar cures don’t work! Mine do. Guaranteed. I thought I was gonna die like a pyjak, popped a couple of these, and I’m as strong as… as…”

“As a pyjak?” offered Anax.

The little alien opened his brown three-fingered hand. Inside was the crushed remains of a few ignac cones from the Radial’s erstwhile flower arrangement.

“You are a fucking pyjak,” Ferank snarled. “Get out of my way, you stinking merchant swine.” She shoved him aside and breached the door to the cargo hold.

It reeked inside. Cloying, sweet, flowery, sugary smells made them both gag. The whole place smelled like a confection factory. It was horrible. Anax wondered, if she made it out of this alive, whether she would ever be able to smell something sweet again without retching. Her stomach was heaving as it was. But not, she thought, because of Fortinbras. Her skin crawled beneath the volus suit. Her mind was beginning to wobble as she soaked in her own subcutaneous oils. It was getting to her. She hadn’t been able to stop for hours upon days. Only to make the tiniest meal o

f a few food wafers in Mess Hall 2 with the others, but not to sleep, and not to strip out of this walking hallucinogenic sarcophagus. If she told the batarian, it was a vulnerability. Only Irit Non knew this weakness. If Ferank decided to turn on her, somehow, for some reason, all she would have to do would be to keep her from getting out of this suit, and eventually, it would kill her as dead as any Fortinbras victim. But perhaps, perhaps it was safe.