The hand that heals

[rewritable]

John slowly started to stand up from his seat near the door to deliver his own speech. As he did so, another vaguely familiar figure near him jumped upright. John recognized the figure as Andrew Ross and discreetly sat back down.

Andrew was obviously eager to give his part of presentation. His brown hair was slightly less unruly than usual, which suggested that he had even tried using a comb while preparing his appearance for the speech. His vivid eyes quickly scanned the people present.

"Khm, may you excuse me, I, ehm, we, that is, I and Dr. Julian of the Cryer's, have some things discovered and I think can take the liberty to announce them to you.

So, as of the disease and the infectious agent causing it, we have determined the following:

The agent has an incubation period of about 8 days, it also has a period of inactivity for about a day, that is 24 hours, from around day five.

Our main concern was the effects observed in the autopsy of one of the passengers, which seemingly did not fit with what we could observe in other patients. That, as we finally understood, is a rather peculiar case and fits logically with the nature of the agent. You see, if there is a weakness, injury or rupture in membranes, the agent can spread further than lungs. It adapts to the new environment, which can cause a nasty effects from our, human, perspective. In this case, it most likely was able to turn the bodily fluids into a sort of acid. That in turn damages even more organs and membranes, allowing the agent to spread even further. End result is as we all observed.

That's one thing I wanted to tell. There is one more.

As you maybe know, at least most of you, it was my actions that inadvertently caused this situation we were in. I think I owe you an apology to some extent. Sorry.

Now, if you excuse me, I have Sam to feed."

Andrew left his position at the table and went to the door. He patted John on the back as the latter stood up.

John straightened his posture and gathered the thoughts that seemed to float everywhere expect in his head.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

A lot have happened over the last few days. First and foremost, I would like to thank The Medics and Dr. Whitesun personally for the swift response to our call of help. Thanks to their selfless efforts we were able to establish the origin of the disease and the ways to combat it.

I also express my gratitude to all the Cryer employees involved in delivering the medicine required, supervising the quarantine and doing the maintenance work in liner's systems to prevent the possibility of re-occurrence of such or similar situation. Their experience has also been invaluable in further analysis of the agent. My condolences for the loss of life of your employees.

Finally, a lot of thank for the ExoGeni team, who did not deny their help and arrived to lend aid and help with the research despite the misunderstandings we had in communication.

The aftermath and recovery from this event will be long and not easy, but the worst is way behind.

In the end I would like to note that effective immediately I am relinquishing all authority aboard luxury liner Hawaii and hand over full command to its captain Jennet Simmons.

Thank you and have a nice day"

John nodded and stepped back from the table. Though, instead of sitting down, he discreetly moved along the few seats that separated him from Jennet and whispered her in the ear, "Please, handle all requests that may come your way. Also, please, send a message to my officer team to start the preparations for department of Lightning without me, I'll join them later."

"What, you can't leave like that in the middle of meeting, it's.." Jennet snapped but John did not let her finish.

"My shift's long overdue," he muttered as he slipped out of the door. Jennet sighed at the thought of double paperwork she will have to go through and returned her attention to the next speaker.

***

"Oh, you will like it. Viewing the cloud from here is marvelous enough, but flying right through it is an unforgettable feeling." about 10 minutes later John was walking with Tanya to the back of Crying Lightning's docking bay. "Of course, you need a right ship for that. IR-7, more widely known as Raven's Talon is perfectly suited for that. It's a custom model, refitted to my specifications. Now, there it is, the beauty"

They had come to a door to small separate compartment on one corner of docking bay. John waved the keycard and stood with his back to the door to watch Tanya's impressions.

The surprised frown in her face made him turn around. Compartment was empty.

***

In the nearby cloud Andrew had just finished the first chapter of flight manual of John's fighter. He hoped that the captain does not get too attached to things. Bad habit. He will return the ship of course, after a few days or weeks, but now he needed to be alone for a while and think. Last few days had given a lot of food for thought. Now he had to decide what to do with his life. Sirius was a playground way too exciting to waste time making hasty decisions.

"Let's see if this thing is really as difficult to fly as the manual suggests," Andrew mused, pushing the speed lever to cruise position.

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