NOVEL NEXT Sickness
“I’m sorry, I have no idea what could be causing this. But whatever it is, isn’t good.”
I felt suddenly cold, and it wasn’t just because the sickbay on board the CSB Revenge of Lycaon was kept at a steady sixty-six degrees Fahrenheit. The doctor, an Unseen in a loose bodysuit of dull grey living plastic, was talking about me.
“What do you mean that you don’t know?” said Arana. “What were all of those tests for?”
“The tests reveal the symptoms and proximate causes, but not what’s actually causing this. I can tell that there’s systematic degradation of the carapace, their blood chemistry is seriously unbalanced, there are serious slowdowns in healing—if you hadn’t told me I would have expected that the break was six hours old rather than six days—but I have no information about what’s causing any of those things.”
The first sign that something was seriously wrong was that my broken arm hadn’t been healing; Stellina took off the cast to examine it the day after the talk with Miri, and she said it hadn’t progressed at all. Then the joint pain worsened, and worsened, until there were times when I could barely walk. By the time the Collective fleet finally arrived in-system, I was starting to feel tired, weak, like I was having trouble getting enough air into me.
“Is there anything you can do?” I asked.
The doctor looked down at his chart, then swayed over to the countertop which he’d been using to store his various notes. “Well, we can treat the symptoms and see if it goes away on its own. But I doubt it will, and with how little of the mechanism I understand, the treatments won’t be particularly effective either.”
Arana’s hand squeezed slightly harder on my shoulder. “What does their prognosis look like?”
“I think I can come up with a series of medications that can keep them alive,” the doctor said, “though it might take some time; Emissary biochemistry is really beyond my expertise. But at the rate things are getting worse, it’s up in the air if they’ll be able to walk under their own power in a couple of months.”
I did the best I could to avoid hyperventilating, but I’m pretty sure everyone in the room could hear my breath getting heavier, more ragged. My main eyes closed, turning the world into a vague blur as I tried to comprehend what had just happened. I could hear the entire sickbay suck in a breath as well. Miri, Quinn, Dr. Erobosh, my parents, I’d let them all listen in on the report.
“There has to be more than that,” said Dr. Erobosh. “I was under the impression that the Collective’s medical science was among the best.”
“For dealing with Collective species, yes. But I don’t have access to much data about what a healthy Emissary is supposed to look like, let alone how to heal a sick one.”
“So, what, I’ll need to go to an Emissary doctor?” I said. Then, grasping desperately onto any sign of hope, I added. “Wait, actually. An Emissary doctor would know what’s wrong, wouldn’t they?”
“Exactly!” Miri butted in. “Didn’t you say there are a lot of Emissaries living in the Collective. Some of them have to have become doctors, we could send out a request.”
“It’d have to be an Emissary doctor with experience treating other Emissaries,” said Stellina. “There aren’t many of those.”
The doctor raised a finger. “An Emissary doctor who has treated other Emissaries, and who has archives of Emissary medical data to inform their diagnosis. Without reference material, I’m not sure an Emissary could do all that much better than I did.”
And my hopes had been dashed. “Sounds like you’re describing an Emissary doctor on… an Emissary planet. There aren’t many of those left, are there.”
He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard to hear. As a naval doctor, I don’t get to deliver this kind of news very often. But I’ll be doing everything I can to make this better, alright?”
I nodded. Unseen pheromones were subtly different from human ones, much bolder, more flagrant, but even still I could tell that he was taking it hard. Must not be easy telling a teenager that they’re sick and not going to get any better.
“Thank you, Doctor,” said Arana. “Is there anything else we should know?”
“Expect an Ariel message in about a day with the treatment. Dr. Erobosh, you said your ship has a polyfac capable of generating class three and four organics?”
“With effort, yes,” he said.
“Alright. I’ll come up with a treatment plan and send you the formulae. If you don’t have any other questions, you should probably go. I do have other patients to work with, unfortunately.”
We cleared out, albeit slowly. For what it was worth, I could still walk, and sometimes even walk quickly, though it would cost me. I felt useless, and I was angry at nothing in particular as though it mattered. No matter how much I reminded myself that feeling that way made no sense, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been cheated. I was young and healthy and I just wasn’t supposed to be sick, dammit!
The Revenge of Lycaon was a huge ship, a full-size battlecruiser, the second-largest warship in the entire Collective fleet. We’d gone to its doctor over any of the others for that reason: the sickbay could hold two hundred patients at once, and as such had better machinery and supplies than any doctor in the system. And neither he nor any of his nurses had been able to do anything against whatever disease was tearing me apart.
Once we had taken the forty-something level elevator ride back up to the Revenge of Lycaon’s docking area, we found ourselves stranded amidst the floodwaters that were the Fade Bjatri station. Ever since the fleet had shown up, the station had been transformed from creepy backwater to an absolute maelstrom of activity. There were literally thousands of Collective soldiers, moving in crowds through the hallways, enjoying themselves in the taverns, and generally letting off steam after the last week of crushing tension and battle. The general atmosphere was similar to when you stuff ten people into a van meant for eight and get a good song on the radio: nobody had quite enough elbow room, but they were all having too much fun to care. And true to what Arana had said a few days before, there was no shortage of food and drink and electricity for all the unwinding.
I couldn’t unwind. I’d been unwinding for the last few days. I was fully unwound, and starting to fray at the edges because my shitty mortal body wasn’t designed for the level of unwinding I’d done. My family and friends were feeling similarly. Especially my parents, who looked like they’d been hollowed out and smelled like dust and destroyed plans. Quinn and Miri weren’t taking it very well, though their feelings were a bit more of the taste of blood and ozone than my parents. Dr. Erobosh was quiet, and he was thinking very hard.
The news coming in from the fleet had been grimly optimistic at best, catastrophic at worst, depending on your mood. New Malagasy wouldn’t be inhabitable for decades, maybe even centuries. Every so often you would see someone having an emotional episode while staring into a holographic image of the planet, painted in brown rock and black ash and glowing red, without an ocean or forest to be seen. The miracle was that, when the Collective fleet had finally arrived and chased off the unnervingly conflict-averse Order ships, nearly half the people who hadn’t evacuated were still alive in those titanic underground bunkers. Two sets of numbers, the count of the dead and the count of the still-living, both five or six orders of magnitude greater than a person could manage, slammed together to make feelings… confusing at best.
We wandered semi-aimlessly for a while, feeling our feelings as quietly as we could, until eventually Dr. Erobosh suggested that we return to the Helium Glider. Nobody had the energy to really contest that, so we did, another long walk back to the docking bays on the far side of the station. Once we were inside with the door closed behind us, it was finally time to collapse.
I needed someone. I needed anyone. Quinn hugged me first, tight in that way that dude-hugs always are but still genuine. I really, desperately wanted to get close to Miri again, to rest my head on her shoulder and feel her hand around mine, but she made it clear that she didn’t reciprocate; I respected that. It was an odd sensation, feeling so profoundly miserable and not crying.
“We’ll find a way,” Arana said, taking one of my lower hands carefully between hers. “There are Emissaries I met before, during the war, who I’m sure will do anything to help you.”
“Are any of them still alive?” Stellina asked, not quietly enough.
“Some of them have to be,” Arana snapped. “I know what planets they emigrated to, I know them, and with how long Emissaries live…”
Dr. Erobosh made a disgruntled clicking noise with his mouth. “Do any of those people have medical expertise? Or access to the collected knowledge of the Emissary people?”
“Even if they don’t, I’m sure that they can—”
“Oy fucking vey,” Miri muttered to herself, “Could all of you shut up and stop thinking about this like a scheme for five minutes? Cathy is sick, and they need your support, not your Mission Impossible bullshit!”
My head slumped in my grasp until it was about an inch from hitting the table. “She’s right,” I mumbled. “We’re just dancing around the ‘bargaining’ stage of grief right now. I won’t die, right?”
Stellina frowned. “Kiddo, just because you don’t die doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying to find a treatment. You’re sick, and we want to do whatever we can to—”
“So what, we’re going to fly off on another wild goose chase? Uproot me again and again, always moving, searching for a cure that might not even exist any more? We don’t even know if any of these friends of yours can help, Arana!”
“I think we should at least try before we just give up and let this sickness destroy you from the inside,” said Arana.
I shrugged. “Feels like I’ve already been destroyed every other way.” I looked down at my unbroken wrist, watching the way the plates of my carapace rubbed and clicked together at the joints. “I was just starting to like this body, and make it into something I could enjoy, and then it falls apart on me. The best thing we can do is… sit back and hope for the best. It isn’t even that bad, not being able to walk; you probably have cool hover-chairs that can go up stairs, right?”
Arana nodded, her eyes glistening with tears.
“Maybe they can get you an anti-gravity belt and you can just fly around,” Quinn said with a chuckle.
“Or move to a low-gravity planet, like that one moon,” I said, suppressing a smile for the sake of everyone else’s stomachs.
Stellina pulled me into a hug, and Arana piled on around her not long after. The hug hurt my joints, but I didn’t care, because the pressure made it feel like the world wasn’t falling apart around me for just a few minutes. Arana might have been crying, it was hard to tell. Quinn and Miri joined onto the group hug a few seconds later, leaving Xara as the odd man out, standing somewhere near the wall and looking on the outburst with faint amusement.
We held the group hug for a minute or two, letting the emotions out, experiencing contact with another human being (or insect alien being), all that hippie stuff. Eventually we were knocked out of that zen state by someone knocking on the entry hatch of the Helium Glider. Arana slipped out of the group in an instant, faintly embarrassed, and hurried over to the door while the rest of us slowly pulled apart.
The door opened to reveal the familiar tiny frame and long braid of Sergeant Hajjar of the CSC Lance of Croatoan. Xe was out of xyr uniform, though xyr posture was still a bit more stiff than you’d expect from someone on shore leave. “Admiral Karus, hello!”
“Oh, Sergeant Hajjar. Glad to see you made it off the planet,” Arana said. “Anything you need?”
“Well, you see, the Lance of Croatoan just got finished with repairs. And, er, Commander Carver has been looking for you the whole time since then. She wants to catch up, celebrate our relative successes, all that.”
Arana winced. “That might not be a good idea,” she said, nodding in my direction.
Once again, trying to steer everything around me. I wasn’t going to shatter if someone dropped me. “No, it’s fine. Let’s celebrate not being dead! That’s worth celebrating, actually.”
Better to not have to think about how much worse things were going to get. Better to let my family forget that I was sick, so that maybe they wouldn’t baby me around so much and act like I was the bird with the broken wings. Never mind that I sort of, kind of, was the exact definition of the bird with the broken wings. Part of me wanted to suffer in silence and just get it over with.
So anyway, that’s how I learned that they have bowling in space. Apparently the original kidnapped humans had brought it with them when they were enslaved by the Dominators, and the sport had survived the intervening several centuries in a modified but mostly recognizable form. It was a weird mixture of the familiar and the totally bizarre, watching a thirty-foot-long snake woman playing bowling by coiling and uncoiling her body instead of stepping forward. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to play, but once one of the Collective navy soldiers pointed out that I still had two working left arms, I threw all self-consciousness to the wind and gave it a try.
The time in between frames of bowling was spent sharing the story of how we’d escaped from New Malagasy, mixed in with tangents of things that had happened years ago. The Lance of Croatoan had an even more interesting story to tell than we did, somehow, involving a one-on-one duel with a Pale Star cruiser. The best storyteller out of the other crew was a fuzz-chinned Sunder, who could have had a lucrative second career as a podcast narrator if they hadn’t instead learned how to shoot lasers at people, telling the story with gusto and occasional corrections from Commander Carver.
It was midway through the seventh frame, with my score somehow not in absolute dead last, when the conversation finally turned around to what we had been up to. Stellina took charge of telling the story. I did my best not to listen to her. My own memories of that event were more than enough, thank you. But, inevitably, we reached the part of the story where Helium freaked out and turned the gravity up.
“The thing was,” Stellina said, “most of us were having trouble just breathing. But Cathy here, they have six limbs and wings to cancel out the gravity, so they could still move around. So we had them go down and cut the cable that was allowing Helium to do this. Cathy, do you mind telling what happened next?”
I winced because, in fact, I did mind. Part of me wanted to try deflecting, convince Stellina to paraphrase what had happened or just pretend I couldn’t hear her. But the other part of me didn’t want to cause a scene.
“I crawled down into the main deck,” I said, mumbling quietly. “But I had to take the ladder down into the engineering deck; Xara hadn’t fixed the elevator, yet.”
Commander Carver visibly sneered. “That’s a code violation if ever I’ve heard one. You need to take better care of my ship, or she’ll betray you faster than a Dominator who heard you had gold fillings.”
“So I did take the elevator. It went well for about the first third of the way down, until Helium had to do some evasive maneuvers. I fell, which is where I got this,” I said, gesturing to my cast. “Still cut off the connection though. Had to use my claws.”
I didn’t realize until then that a woman with a snake’s face could smile, but apparently she had rather more subtle control over the muscles around the corner of her mouth than I’d expected. “I’m impressed,” she said, her voice getting slightly lower. “You must be one tenacious bastard to have been able to pull that off; I like that.”
“Thanks?” I said, shrugging. “I mean, on top of everything else going on, now I have a broken arm to deal with.”
“Everything… else?” Carver said.
“We’re going through some tough… personal issues, right now,” said Arana, getting up from the bench to do some actual bowling. “Let’s leave it at that.”
I trilled in annoyance, and waited until she was out of earshot. “I’m sick. Like, really life-threateningly sick. And because all of the Emissary doctors got vaporized by the Order, nobody knows how to cure me.”
The expected reaction from Carver was pity; or maybe a reserved, cold understanding, if I was lucky. What I didn’t expect was that her slit pupils would go wide as she opened her mouth as though to blurt something out. She looked to Sergeant Hajjar, as well as a man who I’d later realize was her first mate. I could smell her stress levels spiking as the three of them held a brief conversation entirely in nods, shrugs, and eyebrow movement, before she leaned in close to whisper something to me.
“Not all of the Emissary doctors.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you whispering?”
“Because it’s meant to be a secret, and we’re in a bowling alley,” she said. “But the point is, I think I know how to help you.”
We leaned back apart. “Why do you even care?”
“No idea,” she said with a shrug. “‘Guess because you’re the Tigress’s kid. Or just because you’re in need and there’s something I can do about it.”
“I told you not to call me that name,” Arana said, returning to the seats. “Now what did I miss?”
“Cathy told me about their… problem. I think I can help fix it, but this isn’t something I can talk about in public. When the round is done, meet me by the bathrooms; they’re a little disgusting, nobody ever uses them, and they make a truly wonderful place to do things that you, uh, don’t want other people finding out about.”
Arana sighed, probably because she was disappointed in me for telling Carver about it. Her pheromones were inconclusive. “If I had any doubts that you were an Unseen… I’ll listen to what you have to hear. Cathy?”
Part of me didn’t want to put any more effort into it, to just degenerate in quiet dignity. The other part of me pointed out that that was stupid, I was letting my self-loathing get the better of me, and I should damn well listen to what Carver had to say. “Sure. After I’m done getting my ass kicked at bowling.”
I did indeed get my ass kicked at bowling, though two crew members of the Lance of Croatoan managed to score less than the dying bug with the broken arm. With all the stories to tell already told, we shook hands and congratulated each other on not dying, before most of the other crew splintered off into small friend groups and went off in search of more merriment. Commander Carver, her stoic first mate, and Sergeant Hajjar were the only ones who remained behind to meet myself and Arana at the bathrooms.
“So what was it you wanted to tell us about?” said my mother.
Carver circled us with her tail, looking around to make sure there weren’t any intoxicated aliens or spy drones listening in. “Normally I’d have to emphasize how important it is that you keep this a secret, but I don’t think that’ll be an issue with you,” she said. “About eight months ago, while we were on patrol, we crossed paths with an Emissary ship.”
Arana’s interest was piqued. “What do you mean by ‘Emissary ship’? There are no Emissary ships.”
“And besides, not just any random ship is going to have the medical stuff I need.”
“This wasn’t just any Emissary ship,” Carver said. “They were… nomadic, avoiding the attention of the Order by never being in the same system for too long. It was like they had taken an entire autoplex and attached engines and propellant tanks; they didn’t give us a full breakdown, but even passive scanners placed the population at around ten thousand. If they don’t have the expertise you need on board that ship, then it isn’t to be found anywhere in the universe.”
It was a bit of a shock that Carver’s secret information was actually useful. I’d been expecting to hear about some new experimental treatment, or a friend of a friend she had who had cured their sickness through meditation techniques or whatever. That she had come forward and revealed something with actual promise sent me mentally reeling.
“Are you sure?” was all I could think to say.
“Of course I’m sure,” Carver said, confusedly. “I spoke to several people from that ship, and unless I’ve gone blind or insane, they were all Emissaries.”
“Well, that’s certainly… incredible,” Arana said with a nervous smile.
“We all swore ourselves to secrecy,” Hajjar explained. “But I think in this case that breaking the secret is justified.”
Arana nodded. “Of course. Where was this?”
“New Ivehar,” Carver said. “Four or five days’ journey from here. The ship has no doubt moved on since then, but we might be able to follow their trail if we ask around there.”
Arana furrowed her brow. “I’m sorry, ‘we’?”
“I was operating under the assumption that the Lance of Croatoan might escort you. You’re wanted by the Order; you’ll need more protection than just the hull of that little yacht of yours. For the Tig— for a retired Admiral, my crew would be willing to do it.”
“Cathy, do you want to…?”
“Yes. I do. Of course I do. Even if I wasn’t sick I’d want to. You do realize I’ve never met a member of my own species before, don’t you?”
Everyone’s pheromones got a fraction darker at the mention of that. “Very well, then. Admiral Karus, do you suppose you could do me the honor of sending the message to High Command, requesting I be allowed to use my ship for a… humanitarian mission? I could do it myself, but I believe having your name on it would make them more… lenient.”
My antennae raised up. “Wait, you’re just allowed to do that? Take your whole ship out on whatever mission you want?”
Arana nodded. “Unlike on Earth, we tend to look poorly on the idea of having all this power and not letting some good be done with it.”
I had to suppress a smile, not just at what she had said but at everything going on. Another adventure, and the possibility that I wouldn’t actually have to suffer in silence as the illness took hold. My mother and the Commander had a few more details to hash out in a bowling alley bathroom, but I left with my wings fluttering in excitement.
…
“We’re going with you!” said Miri.
“What? No! It’s already been a month, over a month even, and who knows how many more weeks it’ll take to find this Emissary ship!” I said, leaning over the table on the Helium Glider with my head in my hands. “You two need to go back to Earth as soon as possible.”
“First of all, this is the only ship that can take us back to Earth, and I sincerely doubt Dr. Erobosh is going to abandon you like that,” Miri said, raising her hand and folding down her index finger.
“Second, we’re not going to abandon you like that either,” Quinn added. “Shit’s dangerous out here.”
“Third, there’s still three more months in the semester, so a couple extra missing weeks won’t hurt us that much,” she continued, folding down her middle and ring fingers.
“And lastly, I’d much rather be out here fighting space nazis than having to deal with shitty Broadleaf and my shitty mother.”
Miri folded down her pinky and raised her eyebrow at me.
“Okay, maybe Quinn’s mom is as good a reason as any,” I said. “But come on, Miri. You have a good life ahead of you, with a doctorate and shit. Don’t risk it all just to spend a little extra time with me.”
“That’s the exact point, though,” said Miri. “This is my last chance for… adventure, and exploration, and not having to deal with eight hours of math every day. You’d have to tear me away from an opportunity like that.”
“Fair enough,” I said, sitting up. “If I were in your shoes, I… well, I wouldn’t be getting a degree in biology, but I’d probably also agree with you.”
Miri sighed. “Mhmm. Gotta, you know, take my wins when I can get them,” she said. I could smell her mood dropping, but I did my best not to pry any further.
Quinn reached across the table, gently laying one hand on my shoulder. “Also, besides all of that, we’re still your friends. We’ll do whatever it takes to support you. Even if that means going even further into the far depths of space.”
“Exactly, that!” Miri said. “Adventure, power of friendship, getting to miss school, what’s there not to love?”
