The only people that were present were three of The Medic's guards, dressed in white with medical masks on, each of them held a small, but high quality side-arm. They looked confused. One of them started to speak:
"Your neural net broken? The Doctor and the captain felt they could no longer rely on people that think they can afford to let dead-sick people wait this long. They contacted ExoGeni, and just now when that happens all of the sudden you show up like the Inquisition? And coming like an idiot as well. This place is already under quarantine to begin with and second no contract were signed
Now of course, I don't think the doctor would want the medicine go to waste, but he doesn't trust you guys either. I guess, we'll just have to call him, and the two captains. And in the mean time wait for the arrival for ExoGeni.
Oh yeah and since this operation is still under The Medic's control, no guns, and you will be watched."
John rushed in through door breathing heavily. He shrugged off the deja-vu feeling at the sight of firearms, then proceeded over the docking bay towards the group of people. His arm slid again by old habit to his hip, however, this time, there indeed was a discreet sidearm by his belt, taken from Lightning's armory on John's way here.
"You made your appearance! Wonderful!"
John slowly walked to a place where he could see both medics and the arrivals, somewhat in-between them.
"Either way, since your team is here, we have to get to work. Somehow. A team with necessary skills and experience is a great help in our situation. I see you have a checklist of sorts there..." John scratched his head nervously, his brain working frantically thinking how to settle the situation in the best way. A potential shootout was definitely not included in his plans.
"First of all, guns must go," he looked first to Cryer team, then to Medic guards, "All of them. I will arm my and Hawaii's officer staff, they will ensure security from now on. I don't want any 'accidents' here.
You both probably don't really like each other now, but we all will have to cooperate one way or another. Dr. Whitesun and his people have done a massive amount of work and know the situation here better than everyone else in Sirius. Cryer has overall experience in dealing with contagious things, people and all that."
John made a short a pause to breath in, then continued,
"Offer to ExoGeni still stands. An extra amount of medicals have never killed anyone. I plan to distribute it to all registered OSC liners; in the rare event this disease strikes again, I don't want an epidemic of this scale happen again anywhere"
ExoGeni's main transporter, Novaris was coming alongside with dr. Maxwell and his staff. Novaris' pilot contacted the Liner to receive mooring coordinates. The Novaris was carrying almost 7000 units of the cure produced from the datafiles given by The Medics. Novaris' Pilot : This is ExoGeni Novaris transport vessel, requesting mooring coordinates.
The Liner's operator gave the pilots the proper coordinates and Novaris moored with the vessel. The crew first passed through a bio filter to ensure that they will be safe in the quarantined space of the Liner. At the request of The Medics, Tiberius and his staff entered without any sort of holstered weapons. At Tiberius' sign, the crew of the trasport started to unload all the medicine they brought to the Liner's cargo bay. He then passed through several doctors and medics, and he reached Dr. Whitesun. Finally we meet, greetings Dr. Whitesun a pleasure to meet you, I am Tiberius Maxwell. I hope the medicine we made will help you get some extra men on their feet and also if you already have enough, If something wrong will happen, you will have enough for 2 Liners *laughs*. Besides me I brought my research staff, composed of genetics, technicians, biologists, bio-engineers and also bio-physicists. Just in case... Again I am very grateful that you called ExoGeni for support in this problematic issue. I can assure you have the best line of product that we made so far.
Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. - Sovereign
"Report!" An unusually harsh commanding voice could be heard from the small crowd of Cryer inspection team, which members were still offloading the equipment from their transport.
The liner's main mooring service cargo bay was in a state of chaos. Members of the liner, medics, ExoGeni and Cryer hurried around, carrying supplies and equipment as well as arguing with each other.
Felix was the last to arrive, right after the inspectors' transport. Upon arrival, he'd only spoken to the Captain Frial briefly regarding the requested medical supplies, before disappearing in the fury of lab coats and hazmat suits to attempt to at least bring discipline and order to his colleagues.
A few minutes later, Cryer's corner of the cargo bay has organised itself significantly. There were no more workers bumping into each other, no more juvenile bickering between different groups and the team ascended from total disorder to almost harmonic.
Emerging from the lower platforms of the cargo bay was two figures fully outfitted in reinforced containment suits with external oxygen supplies and shaded re-breather masks. The taller figure had an elegant and shiny looking sidearm in a well decorated holster at its waist. The thinner figure was busy tapping away at its data pad clumsily with chunky, gloved fingers. After a low hum by the cargo lift, the two reached the upper cargo bay platform and approached the small group containing the official representatives.
"Now that, Ashley, is the power of superior management." The taller figure said, whilst pressing a touch sensitive button on his re-breather. The reflective tint, designed to enhance the visor's radiation protection, lifted and a smart looking, suave and middle aged man's face was revealed
"You never cease to amaze me, Felix." The suited female also revealed herself as Ashley, the man's assistant, with features fit to be an actress and a pair of deep, blue eyes.
"Gentlemen, I'm H&S Executive Coordinator Felix Cabulb. I'll be in charge of the entire quarantine process from beginning to end." Felix smiled and introduced himself, "I believe you've seen me in communications before, pleased to meet you."
He extended his hand, expecting a customary handshake.
Everyone in the group looked uneasily at each other; Felix quickly retracted his hand with an awkward smile.
"I must apologise on behalf of Cryer's late arrival, our response teams have gotten rusty in emergency quarantine preparation procedures." Felix explained, "I assure you that some incompetent fool will be fired at the end of the day."
"Alright, I believe my colleagues have already covered our terms and conditions with you? Excellent. However, I'm rather uncomfortable about the weapons. Our riot suppression… I mean civilian pacification team are armed with non lethal weapons at most, I specifically issued an order to keep lethal weapons back at our cache on our transport. Ashley, provide the captain with a full list of our weapons and their specifications."
"Coming right up, sir." Ashley started tapping her data pad hastily again.
"Just in case you might want to ask, gentlemen." Felix said and drew his sidearm from its holster.
The liner security guards around the men tightened the grips on their weapons in alarm.
"CVX-20SK Cyclic Neutron Pistol, handcrafted second collector's edition, customised carbon fibre grip and trigger guard, Iridium composite barrel, diamond decorated mode dial and third generation CVX micro particle dissipation trajectory calculator. Totally harmless, at least, without a power cell." He showed the guards the empty compartment on the pistol, where the power cell is supposed to be. "I assume I can keep this status symbol of mine, captain."
Just as the captain was about to reply, a sharp bleep was heard from Ashley's data pad and she muttered to herself, "Bingo!"
Ashley politely handed the pad to Captain Frial and said, "All the information you need on our registered armaments are included in this current file. As you can see, they comply with the latest Sirius legislations as well as being in mandatory company policy in a situation like this."
"I sincerely hope we can all resolve our misunderstandings and cooperate in harmony," Felix added, glaring at the medics' leader, "after all, we're here to save lives right?"
"Let the quarantine begin."
"good to see you, Dr. Maxwell. Come let's go to the rest."
He gestured for him to follow his lead. They walked through several hallways until they reached Cryer and Cpt. Frial.
"Ah gentlemen, welcome. As my guard told you probably, this operation is still coordinated by The Medics with help of the captain's staff. I would gladly hand over the control, but the fact that two rival corporations are both involved would make that very difficult.
Now unfortunately the original medbay did not have the capacity for so many people, especially not when the doctor on board this ship got sick himself as well. It´s no longer suited for it´s job now.
Me and my men have set up a makeshift hospital which, when everything is organised properly, can serve to distribute the medicine. "
Tiberius listened carefully to each word of the doctor's proposal and he also looked very intrigued at the Cryer's inspection team which arrived shortly before his arrival.
If you will excuse me doctor, I want to say something regarding the ... rivalry that you mentioned. As head of ExoGeni I can speak for the corporation itself, we are willing to cooperate with the Cryer representatives as long as we get the same feedback from them. We can let our differences into the business area, while here we bring help to the innocent lives that struggle to fight this mutagenic virus. Also dr. Whitesun, I don't know if you exactly heard but Novaris is currently ExoGeni's flagship which means that we have the technology to create several medbays around the Liner so we can start the distribution faster. If you ask how we can provide this amount of equipment, well its very simple. Novaris was engineered to be a fully operational Medical Outpost. Aboard we have 25 CBR-45 GeniX, which are portable laboratories. They are equiped with the finest line of medical tech. You can do further analysis on the virus, genetic modifications, and all type of needed service. At your call doctor I will inform my ships crew to start unloading the GeniXs on the Liner, and place them where is needed most.
Rudimentary creatures of blood and flesh, you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding. - Sovereign
At first John tried to help with the coordination of unloading process despite most of equipment being a complete enigma to him both by appearance and by name. He soon abandoned the efforts when one of workers mentioned that giving instructions to place boxes with notice "Warning: heavy" on top of those that say "Warning: fragile" is not the brightest idea.
That left him with little to do for the while, so he eagerly went to meet Mr. Cabulb as soon as the latter made himself known.
"Nice to meet you, Mr. Cabulb. You too, miss," John nodded to Felix and his assistant, fixing his look on Ashley for slightly longer than normally appropriate.
John then took the pad Ashley handed to him. He recognized and understood only a little part of it, but he did not let it show as he skimmed through the list with expert-like expression and handed it back, "All right, keep your poke-sticks. Unpowered weapons also do not concern me. Just do not wave either around, people are tired everywhere and can get nervous"
Dr. Whitesun and Dr. Maxwell had just joined them, so John turned and greeted the head of ExoGeni.
He listened to what both men had to say, nodding from time to time as he found there is little he can add to that conversation.
"By the way, since there most likely is a need of extra space, Jennet gave orders to prepare a couple of empty cabins near makeshift hospital. If any of you need one or a few, either as an office of sorts, or just as a rest room, make it known to anyone of officer staff or me personally, they will arrange a room and help with all the necessary equipment.
Also, I believe Andrew should have posted the plans of both liners on local network by now, so if you find yourselves lost, just look it up on root directory. Don't worry about authorization, he accidentally disabled it as well, by old habit, I guess."
"Very well. I suggest Cryer and ExoGeni start working on their plans to distribute the medicine. Me and my men will be in the makeshift-hospital and on our ship at mooring point 1, seek us out there if you need us."
A senior logistics distribution manager turned to who he assumed was Tiberius, pad in hand: 'Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances, I'm Jacob, nice to meet you. We have people in place for the 'dirty-work': as for patient treatment; here's the inventory of what we have boxed up, I guess that Mr Whitesun wants us to put the bulk of this in the Hospital area. We had been briefed that the medics would be handling distribution, and that this agent had caused zero casualties, the case seems to have changed. Would you like us to help you with distribution? Would you prefer to handle the first autopsy? Of course if you have all the hands you need there are other concerns we could be attending to: the medical security here doesn't seem as up to date as the Shetland for instance'¦but I personally would be keen to observe how your staff handle triage and so forth whilst the rest tinker away?'
***
Sophie had not imagined a year ago when she started working for Cryer, that she would end up face down in a seemingly endless vent that was surely only small enough to admit two rats abreast. The quarter kilometre that she had crawled this last hour had felt like a thousand, her whole body felt as if she'd been vac-wrapped, packed, and compressed; but the filter control was in sight just a few feet away. Sophie wriggled on in the manner of a demented caterpillar, her arms outstretched, pushing her tiny kit ahead. A deadpan voice squawked through her earpiece 'Alright technician, here's the reason you're there instead of some stupid droid: these 'self-maintaining' filters have sent many good people down tight chutes - so let's make sure this one doesn't ruin anyone more days. First you're going to need to isolate the trigger circuit, sort out that mess with the extraneous relays they threw in there. Then interface, actualise, and re-calibrate that netch to within a 0.0000001 tolerance. Don't forget your going to need to unroll that micro-mesh in case the weave there is damaged - which I imagine it is.' Similar units were enacting the same claustrophobic procedure at several points inside the vast network of systems spanning the Hawaii, routinely transmitting their findings and progress to the shared database for review.
***
Outside the fevered atmosphere of the liner, passing patrols were routinely questioned and scanned by auxiliary medical craft: who were keen in their pursuit of cleanliness. Large sentinel like transports crawled through the system, metre by metre, as they analysed each particle in their laboriously sluggish sweep. As expected, no space bourn infectious agents were detected, but the law was clear and so the crews continued their thankless task, periodically voicing their acknowledgement and progress to the co-ordinators team, who would in turn, inform the other medical personnel.
***
A nervous looking intern dodged awkwardly through the crowd and approached Co-ordinator Cabulb. Ignoring his assistant, the man leaned and peered past her waving a datapad 'Sir! As requested: a list of the fittings so far that have been found to be infected or below established safety thresholds'¦Sixteen bio-neural processing units, Three atmospheric processing filters controls, Five atmospheric processing filters, Two hundred and fifty metres of atmospheric ventilation and distribution conduit, One 'back-massager' containing infected Bio-gel, Three natural fibre garments, And a barrel of the Pinot Grigio eight hundred sir!'
The blue-eyed set of curves that was Ashley briefly pouted before replying 'And are those copies for the Medics and Exogeni teams, Intern' her sultry stress of the word quickly brought the mans eyes back up as he stammered 'um..yes mistress! Um..Maam!?' 'You'd better move fast then'¦Daryl' the intern yelped and scurried quickly from sight, his face flushed.
***
Secreted in a janitorial storage compartment, Julian (tertiary facilitation and implementation co-ordinator) ranted into his comm. '...that's just it co-ordinator! They've been running over capacity! For god knows how long!?' his tone lowered becoming apologetic 'Yes Co-ordinator, Yes sir, Sorry Sir: no I don't want to leave them with sub-standard safety equipment either sir. What?! Triple this output!? But that will take'¦.no sir, sorry sir...' And so the Cryer staff, dispersed like ants, enacted the familiar routine with the usual precision of rote procedure; giving the other medical units a wide berth.
Muffled thuds and muttering could be heard in an otherwise empty passageway. John put his ear to the wall and hold his breath trying to estimate the cause and location of sounds. They seemed to come from a vent parallel to passageway. John knew Cryer was going to do some work in ventilation system, but he never thought they would be as determined as to actually send their employees into the system. Hell, he didn't even know it is possible. Judging from sounds, the person in there also was in serious doubt about it.
John found the place where muttering was the loudest and knocked the wall a few times, "Can I help you in any way and form?". There was a silence for a few seconds before angry muttering and thuds resumed again. John quickly pulled back from the wall and went on his way to Hawaii's bridge.
Andrew Ross was walking around makeshift hospital trying to find something to occupy himself with. He had rested for a while and now felt fine again. He had also fed Sam its daily meal (it was keen on any kind of salads offered) and updated the local network with liner's plans as John had asked him. All this lead to that Andrew was now a bit out of the loop of what was going on in hospital.
Andrew noticed a group of people in white overalls and masks gathering in one side of the room, not far from doors. He recognized some of them as Medic's staff, but not all of them. Most were busy unpacking some boxes and distributing their contents over a few tables.
Andrew figured that those must be the final preparation before the actual distribution. He causally walked to the corner where medic's supplies were stored and quickly found a box he was looking for. Just a few seconds later he blended with the group, now wearing a white overall over his casual clothes and a white mask covering his face.
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