Eventually, the flight ended as the crew were directed to dock at an Imperial Naval station where they were escorted in by a pair of Rampart light fighters. After they'd docked and equalized pressure, they opened the hatch to meet with the chief of the bay in which they were settled. He told them to "hang out here" to be taken care of in a few minutes. They spent a few more minutes without information and watched crews going about their duties while they waiting. Soon, they saw a full Naval Captain making her way through the gantry to their ship. When she arrived and greeted them, the Captain introduced herself as Captain Mirjam Kristianson. She then asked them to follow her.
Mikah, Zimzod, Brian, Rol and Emkir all had enough experience with Imperial Naval officers to know this woman was fully qualified to command ships as devastating and massive as a Tigress class battleship. Such people were not delegated to "greet and escort" duties. So, that added another very strange twist to the situation they were finding themselves in. Very quickly, the Captain led them in-station and, after some walking and some transport on moving floors, they arrived at what appeared to be a briefing room, decked out with workstations. Asking them to have seats, Captain Kristianson turned and, taking a breath, explained the situation.
While she spoke, Kristianson explained that just more than three days before they'd arrived in Risek System an illness outbreak had begun in a public arcology which was part of the Podesta nation. Initial medical responders were not aware of the nature of the disease they were dealing with and were also completely unprepared for the sudden spikes in cases throughout the arcology. That station's population was in the area of 110,000 sophonts. Soon after the outbreak became a tidal wave reports started coming out of the arcology of the beginnings of a collapse of the station's medical support infrastructure and desperate pleas for help.
And just as quickly, calls for the withdrawal of connections from the arcology and demands from the other stations and arcologies for protection from the Imperial Navy came. As far as the Imperial Navy knew, every social structure had begun breaking down aboard the Podesti Arcology. While naval information technologies had been able to break through the firewalls and gain access to all of the station's computers, this didn't allow them to control a population gone wild. So, while they could see some still functional doctors buried in the panic and desperately treating the symptoms by working with already infected people, no one was working on finding out exactly what they were fighting.
It was at that point that Dame Mikah surpassed the sinking feeling in her heart to ask, "So what do you want us to do?" And there it was. Captain Kristianson said that Dame Mikah's qualifications were more than sufficient enough to lead work to figure out what this disease was. That drew an immediate response from Mikah, "You want us to go over there?! We are not going to risk our lives while you stand by keeping everyone else out. What the hell are you doing with all the ships and people you have here?" Kristianson responded that the navy was stretched thin maintaining the quarantine and trying to stop events like the shoot down of fleeing ships, and they didn't have the spare forces to deal with the outbreak. So, they were back to what the navy expected of the team?
Kristianson said the briefing room they were in was to be their headquarters. From there, the Imperial Navy would connect them to whatever resources were available and whoever was willing or able to help with their work. She reminded them that no one was leaving the system until the situation was resolved. It became increasingly clear the team would be doing the work one way or the other, but the Captain was starting out by being polite. So they got down to business, asking about the naval and civilian responses in more detail. They considered the possibilities from an intentional attack or to an ill passenger arriving or passing through the arcology and infecting locals. The Admiralty had also realized the quarantine wasn't put in place before some people from the infected arcology left, and could be carrying the disease to other systems.
So many of the couriers and scout craft attached to the fleet had jumped out to every local system to which ships had left in the last week. Of course, the ships which left a week before would be up to four days ahead of the following naval warning, but it was the best they could do with current technology. The ships with fasted maneuver drives were dispatched to those systems where transports able to enter atmospheres jumped. The hope was that a fast ship could overtake an earlier arrival in normal space and disable it if needed. Those ships were also tasked with spreading the word that the fleet command in the Risek system needed help. The soonest of those reinforcements would not arrive for another eleven days at the present.
When talk got down to the disease itself, the crew learned that very little was known at all. The first known symptoms were a loss of energy. Patients didn't "feel tired", but felt lethargic and without energy. Initial known responses were simple physical examinations and recommendations to take some time off, rest and get more sleep. That lasted until clinics began seeing enough people with the exact same complaint to drive someone to connect the dots. As the number of patients rose above ten, some of the more forward thinking clinics started to call around. It was at this point realization dawned and the panic was born. Some initial blood test data was received as the upper echelon medical establishment started reaching out for help, but the outbreaks were spreading so fast doctors were being pulled off other duties to treat the mounting number of patients.
Unfortunately, that was never reversed, as the medical centers worked to treat the flood of patients as if a madness had taken control. Not knowing anything concrete about the disease, Admiral Chauss, the senior Admiral in-system, ordered a 100% quarantine allowing the navy to act without infection to control the situation. That order had held because no source of real information could be developed. But the quarantine had taken up so much of the naval resources that they can only hope to get additional help from outside the system. "Unfortunately for you, your team", Kristianson said, "is the first of that help". Realizing the situation they were all in, Dame Mikah was the first to admit to herself that the situation required someone to board the arcology if any real information was to be gathered.
But they didn't know if they would toxify the outer surfaces of their ship and vacc suits by going over. Or if they could detoxify anything that had been exposed to the virus. According to Kristianson's description, the pathogen was airborne and seemed to occur in many parts of the arcology at the same time, so no section of the station was safe. This led to a discussion about getting ahold of ultraviolet lights to be used with vacuum to create a decontamination system to safely rescue the uninfected. On this point Kristianson was firm, even when Zach and several others seemed incredulous at the idea, that there were not huge cargo containers of such materials just sitting and waiting for such as disaster to occur. The team seemed, to Kristianson, to not get the idea that any stocks of these materials would be jealously withheld or "lost" in order to protect their owners if the disease made the leap from station to station rather than be turned over for a relief effort. Especially when such a relief effort would result in people being pulled out of the infected arcology and brought to places of safety.
Especially when it would take just one mistake to accidentally spread the disease and cause new outbreaks that would threaten those who were safe. No, no one was coming out of that station to infect them and no supplies were going out to help the doomed. Even if it meant taking up arms against Marines! Finally Captain Kristianson got through to most of the team, though Zach even tried to float the idea of sending a general message out to those who might be illicitly growing pharmacologically active plants. He seemed to hope they'd say, "Yes, I am illegally growing drug bearing plants but come and wipe out my operation by taking all my lights so you can save people who I don't care about while exposing my operation so I can not restart it after, even if you do not arrest me in the process of outing myself." The Captain did finally convince them the rest of the system would rather see those 110,000 people die if it meant they and their families would be safe.
And so it was that Dame Mikah started dividing the team. She was certain that those without medical training would be largely useless so there'd be no need to risk them. She announced that she, Zach and Zimzod would suit up and take the cutter over to the arcology to search for a safe place to land the cutter while not exposing it to what they were now calling "The Virus". The rest would remain on the naval station and, with the help of naval technicians, organize an effort to learn as much about the situation as they could. Sir Brian asked if there was a proper map of the arcology and was told they had a full 3D engineering simulation of the station from its own engineering management stations. The navy techs assigned to explore it were a bit overwhelmed with figuring out systems that, while similar to ship systems, were not the systems they were trained on.
Brian proposed creating a device using vacuum to kill most viruses even if he couldn't get UV lights to complete the detox. At the same time, all the records from the hospitals and clinics were available on the computer network and Ms. Vik and Emkir were aptly suited to dig into those for any patterns. Rol was tasked with working with the naval techs on creating a condensed list of all the ships that arrived at and or left the arcology in the last 20 days while Aiden was told to assist where ever he was asked to. And with five of the team beginning their work on naval Station 371, Dame Mikah and Sir Zimzod returned to the ship and boarded the cutter while Zach piloted it across the brief open of space to the doomed station.
_________________________________________________________________________ Next: Thirteen Unlucky Hours