Skeleton Crew

Chapter 16: Disease

Captain Ateri closed the door behind him. The lights were dimmed, and Jakari sat on the bed, crunching loudly on snacks. She was completely engrossed in the screen just beyond the foot of the bed, and didn’t look up when he entered the apartment.

A female geroo screamed.

“You’re not eating bencardo seeds on my side of the bed, are you?”

Jakari made a big show of scooting over to her own side of the bed, making an exaggerated grunt with each motion. She wiped crumbs from her muzzle. “No…” she said around a huge mouthful.

Ateri rolled his eyes at her mockery, and grumbled as he sat down at the terminal she left on for him.

“Viral hemorrhagic peritonitis?” he asked.

Jakari nodded without taking her eyes from the screen.

His mouth hung open slightly as he read. “Oh, this is horrible!” He scrolled down. “Ninety percent mortality rate…? No known cure…? Sexually transmissible…?” He put his paw over his muzzle and turned to face his mate, eyes wide.

“Yeah, I know,” Jakari replied. “I can’t take credit for the text, though. Bata’ho has a gift for the macabre. I’d almost be afraid to sleep with you after reading that entry.” She looked up long enough to give him a wink and a smile. “Almost.”

“And these photos?” Ateri mumbled, looking back at the terminal.

“Screenshots from Pallbearers 3.” She gestured at the movie on screen. “The database said that no one on board had watched it in fifty years. I couldn’t delete the file, so I marked it as ‘censored’ to limit who could download it from here on out.”

Ateri stifled a chuckle. “This article is two hundred and seventy-nine years old.”

Jakari nodded. “Yeah, I made up all the dates. I linked a dozen different articles to this one and deleted the timestamps on the different edits.” She winced slightly as another female gave a blood-curdling scream. “It won’t stand up to much scrutiny, but it looks authentic enough that I doubt any male will hesitate if you make getting tested mandatory. Even if they did, I think all the females on board will make their males get tested.” She gave Ateri a wink.

“Males only?”

“Paragraph five,” she said with a grin. “Bata’ho’s an evil genius.”

Ateri scrolled back up and read the paragraph out loud. “Only one test currently exists for the virus’ presence before the symptoms present. Fortunately, the screening is quick and painless, requiring only a fresh semen sample from the patient. No comparable, early-warning test exists for female geroo.”

Ateri laughed. “I really hate tricking the crew, but at least this should make it easy to get a sample from every crewman.”

“You don’t think it could backfire?” Jakari glanced up. “That there could be backlash if anyone sees through the ruse?”

Ateri shrugged and paged around the article some more. “There’d definitely be a backlash if we told them the truth,” he mumbled. “And I’m really not fond of the idea of doing nothing. We have to be proactive – as long as the risk is reasonable.”

Jakari paused the movie. “Do you think the commissioner really might reduce us to a skeleton crew? I don’t think I could go on if you were…”

“No, it’ll never happen.” Ateri sounded confident, at least. But then again, he was the captain. Being confident was part of the job. “A vial of DNA from each of us is a small price to pay to prepare for the worst, even though it will never be needed.”

Jakari stared up nothing. He smiled, having seen her go through her mental checklists before. “All the medical personnel have been briefed. We told them to treat the screening as routine and to reassure the crew that we were only performing the screening out of an abundance of caution.

“The scanner hardware is programmed to return negative results no matter what sample they scan,” Jakari said with a sigh. “If you really want to do this, the order is in one of the windows. It’s just awaiting your authorization.”

The captain nodded, tapped on the screen a few times, and sent the order ship-wide. Simultaneous beeps sounded from both of their phones as the message was received, moments later.

He crawled into bed and wrapped his arms around her. They sat there in silence for a long while, half-expecting a riot to break out in the adjacent corridor, but nothing disturbed the silence.

“So far so good,” she whispered.

“Can’t undo it now, at least,” Ateri replied. “What about the lists?”

“I got one of the gals in software to create an artificial intelligence that could make objective decisions based on the current crew roster and how many crew members must be recycled,” Jakari replied. “She rolled into it every factor we could brainstorm up.

“An A.I. will be more ruthless than we can trust ourselves to be,” she said with confidence.

“What gal in software?” Ateri looked panic-stricken, but his mate shushed him with a pink pad to his lips.

“I told her we needed a contingency planner just in case a meteorite ever struck the ship, and compromised some of our life support. I said that we created one a hundred years ago, but that no one could find the source code.” Jakari smiled. “She had no problem believing that. I think she understood the need to keep the project quiet, so it wouldn’t cause needless panic.”

Ateri relaxed slightly and their lips met. “I don’t know how I’d manage without you,” he whispered.

“You couldn’t.” She grinned wide.

They held each other in silence for a while. Ateri listened to her slow breath. “So… Pallbearers 3 ?”

“Really not bad, considering,” Jakari said, returning her attention to the image frozen on the screen. She tapped her phone to resume the playback. “You see, they tried to recycle this mad scientist who accidentally poisoned himself in his lab, and just before they toss him into the recycler, he comes back to life and starts biting everyone. Everyone who gets bitten dies and reanimates too. Of course.”

“Of course.” Ateri smirked at the absurd plot. He knew she loved watching horror flicks, but he just didn’t see the appeal.

“Should I start it over?” Jakari asked.

“Nah,” Ateri replied, reaching for the bowl of bencardo seeds.