*
In all the cities, the children, and some of the adults, continued firing, almost silent, deadly, desperately. In the medical centres in the cities, the toll of dead and injured continued to mount but now at an accelerated rate. There was frantic communication with the ships. Isjidakawi and Lijfomid were both trying to calculate how serious this latest outbreak was.
“It’s acting like a neurotoxin. All agree. But it can be lethal. The numbers keep climbing. It seems to be patchy. I don’t know why. It’s like groups get it together.”
“How? What are the diseases?” Lijfomid was getting frantic. He was looking at the numbers. This was disastrous. He checked the latest numbers. The Keulfyd also couldn’t pronounce the Ridianit city names so had simply numbered the cities. The cities occupied by the Keulfyd were numbers 37, 43, 49 and 72.
Lijfomid read that City 37 had had 240 People alive that morning. Only 18 in total had died as of yesterday, but a colossal 140 were too unwell to work. That morning, 82 had been well, or recovering, or well enough to work. The problem was, most of them were occupied with simply looking after the sick. This put them in a vulnerable position to get sick themselves. Which they were doing. Every few minutes, that number of well People was going down. And the number of sick was rising. And this fresh illness was killing many of those sick. Dead. Lijfomid was shocked. The only helpful factor was the lack of panic. Not only discipline held them together. Keulfyd medical science was second only to the Okme. Their people kept expecting them to solve this and produce the cure. Only the very senior staff knew all the details and knew just how encompassing and hopeless this was. They were very close to being overwhelmed.
City 49 had had some of their personnel so sick they were up on their ship. They were badly understaffed. Of the 202 that awoke that morning, only 38 were well enough to work. That was until these latest deaths. Now, the number was reducing. And almost all the well or not very sick were looking after the sick. Yesterday, they had run out of the medical staff and assigned others to help. Most of the sick were well enough to look after themselves but within a day or so that would change as their conditions worsened.
Lijfomid had planned to send a full shift of 45 to relieve them but of those 45, 12 were already ill but had felt well enough to go. That was last night. Now, they were baulking. All of the Force knew what was happening this morning. You couldn’t keep it a secret. What could he do?
City 43 had had 208 People a scant few days ago. The diseases had devastated this city. There had been 115 dead so far and 49 incapacitated by illness and too sick to work. Many were not expected to recover for some time. Lijfomid had been considering what to do with this city. He couldn’t reinforce it as his troops refused to go there. They could count. They didn’t like the odds. That was a major problem with Mercenaries. They didn’t have to obey orders like these. This wasn’t a war. He could have shot them for refusing orders if it had been a war. Mercenaries had the right to refuse any order they didn’t like. And they hadn’t liked that order. He could dock their pay. He could refuse to pay them at all. He suspected they didn’t care about their pay. How right he was. What could he do? Leave the People there and quarantine them? That was what Isjidakawi had told him to do.
The Mercenaries and others were getting into little groups and trying to decide what to do. The security cameras had revealed all this. Several of Lijfomid’s officers were worried about the possibility of a mutiny and a takeover of this ship. Lijfomid didn’t like that idea. He had invested heavily in this ship. He owned one nineteenth of it. That was a great deal of wealth. This little skirmish and ones like it created enormous wealth. But they could be a little risky.
City 72 had been looking better with 285 staff on the ground yesterday. Only 14 had died there. Only 14. How was he going to explain all this to his financial backers? Their dependents still had to be paid plus the death bonus. Lijfomid pulled his mind back on task. How many People were fit? He counted. There were 74. That couldn’t be right! He checked. It was. But that meant 211 were sick or delegated to look after the sick. He moaned. This was a nightmare, he thought. He should be lounging back with all the work done not back at work and shockingly sick. Not only was he going to get zero profit from this but he was stuck with the costs to which there would now be added huge penalties. And as for his reputation, he shuddered to think. He would be a laughing stock and this might be the end of these little jobs that he enjoyed so much. He determinedly, deliberately and obstinately did not consider the possibility that he might not survive. He made a habit of surviving. It was a good habit. He was very good at it! He brought his mind back to the job. This was so awful he had trouble concentrating.
Actually, it was worse. The blow gunners were working steadily. They had hundreds of pellets each. A fair amount of People were wandering about. The well, the mildly ill, and the recovering. Of those, many had gotten within range of someone with a blowgun. And of those, all but three had been hit. Many had been hit several times. One Yakkidimux had been hit five times. It didn’t even make it to the medics.
City 49 had had the usual component of 26 Relog sentries. Of these 26, 12 worked the day shift and 14 worked the night shift. The whole 12 had split up and patrolled around the city while the night shift were eating their meal. This was not how they normally did it but even the Relogs were getting jumpy. They could see no enemy, nothing that could be causing this, nothing different, nothing out of place, no visible enemy! Eight of the Relogs got hit by one or more pellets. Half an hour later, all eight were very sick and one was near death. The other Relogs were very jumpy and were out doing extra patrols too nervous to sit in their quarters. Under the circumstances, this was unwise.
Also unwise in present circumstances was the advice given by the doctors to People to get outside away from the sicknesses, many of which were rather contagious. There was a problem with this advice, or rather many little airborne problems. They were not exactly contagious. But they were lethal.
And Lijfomid as the Force Commander, the part owner of one of the Flying Fortresses, the great planner, Isjidakawi as Chief Medical Officer, who had anticipated only traumatic injuries, and Tyrid, the captain conferred yet again. In a monumental effort of forward thinking, Isjidakawi had organized all the medical staff on all seven of the spaceships into small groups. Their assignment was to diagnose this latest illness. He had one group looking at food, one checking the fluid (which was seventeen main beverages), one group was to analyse the air, one was to study the sick, one was to take samples all through the buildings, one was to go outside doing the same and another group was doing the autopsies while the last group was studying the autopsy samples. With eight groups studying all eight likely contamination sources, surely one group would find something? All were to be in Hazmat suits.
A message came that some of the sick were complaining about having been stung by insects. This latter message was given to the group designated to look for samples outside. But although they were prepared to do the work, and did see the necessity, and realized the haste needed, the groups designated to actually go down to the cities were not keen. They were not in a hurry either.
Tyrid’s focus was on keeping his ship functioning. He was fighting a losing battle. He knew that. He was no longer worrying about the war. His total focus was on his ship. Desperate, he had broken tradition and contacted the other captains only to discover, as the others had told him, that things were just as bad. There was no help from that quarter.
While Isjidakawi’s focus was on the latest disease, Lijfomid was in despair over his mission as the death toll mounted and he tried to keep track of the situation. But it was changing so rapidly. None of the news was good. Then he noticed something. He got on the communicator to Isjidakawi.
“I am looking at the latest figures of this newest illness. All who become ill are dying within half an hour of turning up in the medical centres. And most are dying sooner than that. Check. It seems to be 100% fatal.”
&
nbsp; Isjidakawi checked all the cities and all the ships medical facilities. He reported back.
“There are confirmed reports of deaths only in the cities, from this new outbreak. I have had them all check thoroughly. It is on the planet. All with this new set of symptoms are dying. You are right. None have lived longer than an hour. Most are dying well within 30 minutes of reporting sick. We do not know how long before that that they were infected or poisoned or whatever. The reported cases on the ships were false. Hysteria or panic or something else wrong. I don’t think it is a disease. I know of nothing that fits this clinical picture and neither does the computer but it is still checking. It has to be a toxin or poison, probably a neurotoxin. And we are now asking everyone if they remember being bitten or stung by an insect or something. Almost all confirm this. But not all.
“There were several stinging or biting insects on this planet. They were reported as being exterminated by the Ridianit. Some were nasty but I didn’t hear of anything this nasty.” He shook his head, trying to concentrate. He felt so ill and tired. “But because they were supposedly wiped out, I can find no descriptions. I have sent some People down to access the Ridianit computers but progress may be slow as we will have to get past the passwords and access codes and then use the Translators to try to find references. And because the Ridianit are all dead we cannot ask them.” He paused, thinking. “I wonder if some insect has survived and quietly reached plague proportions. It has the whole niche to itself. No competition. Some insects only sting or bite at certain times in their life cycle. They may not have got them all. Maybe some exotic insects got past Biosecurity. I will order them to make this another priority. Among all the others. I will report back in another hour.”