Footsteps Of Giants - 2. Chapter 2

Chapter II

September 27th, 2143 A.D.

Orbital Platform Leonidas

Low Orbit Over Neptune

We ran as fast as our legs would carry us.

The corridors were empty; most people were probably at their stations or with their families. Under normal circumstances, the halls of a ship this size buzzed with activity. I had to assume the illness had the crew of the Leonidas terrified, partly due to spreading rumors. Rumors travelled fast on a huge platform like this one, and are scarcely checked for accuracy. A terrifying illness can be exaggerated tenfold because people don’t understand what they’re dealing with.

Dr. June led the way. I wasn’t nearly familiar enough with the layout of the ship to make it back to the bridge. He led us down the winding path, a different way than the route that Lieutenant Kul had taken me to the medical lab. We turned a corner, and the lights overhead flickered occasionally, giving this hall a cold, menacing demeanor.

“Dr. June, I need to catch my breath,” I gasped. The run had taken a lot out of me. I hadn’t realized I was this tired. Walking around in a bulky SynthTech suit all day had taken its toll on me.

He slid to a stop, and turned to me as I leaned against the wall. He trembled from head to toe.

“The bridge isn’t much further, Dr. Klein,” he said, a note of panic in his voice.

“Call me Adam. I’m good to go now,” I said. I wasn’t, but if it was not much further, I could deal with the pain. He smiled, and we started moving again at a slower pace.

“You can call me Ivy,” he said over his shoulder. It wasn’t long before we reached the outer doors of Command Central. As per emergency protocol, the doors were locked down and entry required a passcode.

Ivy punched in a six digit code; the door made an unpleasant noise and didn’t move an inch. He punched in the code again, and again it made the noise and didn’t move. The third time, he angrily jabbed his finger into the keypad six times, with the same result.

“Come on! I’m entering the code for Tuesdays!” he yelled at the machine.

“Ivy.” I said.

He had the look of a person who hadn’t slept in days; bags below his eyes, lips dry. His tongue occasionally tried to wet them.

I continued. “Today is Sunday.”

He stared at me with wide, blank eyes for a few seconds. His cheeks reddened but he quickly composed himself, and punched in the correct number. The door chimed before it slid open smoothly. Pierce stood on the other side. His gun pointed at my head. I ducked.

“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed at the man.

“Why did it take you so long to enter in the code?” he demanded. Before I could answer, Admiral Lane stepped in.

“Pierce! If that gun isn’t holstered in twenty seconds, I’ll have Kul toss you out an airlock!”

I’d only been on the platform a short time, but I could see the difference between Lane’s jovial attitude and the growling bear before me. No wonder he had risen up so quickly through the ranks of the military. They needed men like him.

Pierce holstered his gun and snapped to attention.

“Yes Sir! It won’t happen again Sir,” he said, with a quiver to his voice.

Admiral Lane turned toward Ivy and me.

“What is it you need? Have you found something?” The admiral asked, ignoring Dr. June. I was surprised that he was looking to me so soon. After all, Ivy had been in charge of the health of the ship long before I came on board. I’d have to remember to ask Ivy about that the next time we were alone.

“I think you’ll want to bring up the security hologram feed from the medical lab. That will explain it better than we can,” I said. The admiral nodded and pressed a button on his armrest.

“QCU-4, bring up the SecHolo for the current medical lab,” he said. QCU was the model of the computer on the bridge. Quantum Computational Unit, series 4, manufactured by one of my company’s rivals. I didn’t dwell on it for too long, because the computer activated the 360 degree hologram viewer in the center of the room. I did note that it activated it slower than a Klein CompTech computer.

The center of the room filled with a miniature version of the medical lab. In the time it had taken to get to the bridge, the patients had wrecked the entire lab. Overturned examination tables and shattered glass lay everywhere. A patient had torn another patient apart. After a few seconds, the audio filled the room.

“They…left us…alone…scared,” one of them said.

“Alone…darkness…scared…pain,” said another.

The third just gurgled as its throat had been torn out.

“Pierce, you and Kul take a squad down there and deal with this,” the admiral said. “Lethal force authorized.”

Pierce’s eyes lit up like it was Christmas morning. I never will understand soldiers of his caliber. As a man who did his best to save lives, I don’t understand the joy in destroying them.

Pierce, Kul, and a squad of three others left the room. They marched out the door and down the corridor until the door shut and I could see them no more. I noticed Ivy fidgeted more than usual.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said. He looked pale, shaking more than before.

“It’s bad luck to say that,” I joked. “Nothing good ever happens after those words are uttered.”

He gave me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was spooked, and for good reason. This was no ordinary sickness, that much was all too obvious now.

After what seemed like forever, the door to the medical lab slid open and the soldiers strode inside.

“In the name of the Terrestrial Armada, you are under arrest.” Pierce growled. His voice sounded tinny through the hologram, and the threat didn’t seem like much to the creatures in front of him.

“You…stay…with us?” One of the creatures said to him.

“Alone…no…more?” The other said and moved toward Pierce. He raised his gun and aimed but was a split second too late.

The creature moved faster than it should have been able to and slashed Pierce with its jagged fingernails from his waist to his collarbone. He howled in pain, and then shot the creature until it was still. The other soldiers opened fire on the remaining two, killing both.

Two of the soldiers helped Pierce out of the room, and the security hologram changed views to outside the medical lab. The admiral must have set it to track the squad as we watched the events in the lab.

I glanced at Dr. June; his pale complexion now almost white. He was sweating although the temperature was quite cool. After a moment he caught me staring.

“That’s another three patients that died under my watch,” he said, voice trembling. “How many more, Adam?”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself, Ivy,” I said. “I mean that literally. Technically these three died under my watch, as I came on board as the new Chief Medical Officer.”

He gave me a wan smile, and looked away. “A job you may regret taking.”

The hologram showed the squad was about to reach the door to Command Central, and the admiral ordered one of the bridge crew to open the door. The two soldiers carrying Pierce came in first.

“Lay him down over here,” I gestured to a table by my side. I pulled out a pair of synthetic metal hand-shears from the first aid case to cut away his lightly armored uniform shirt. My eyes popped out of my head at what I saw.

“What the hell?” Ivy said

The area where he’d been slashed should have been at the very least a nasty scrape, but judging from the amount of blood on his uniform, it seemed much worse. Looking at his skin, he had a long, barely visible scar. It made absolutely no sense to me.

I poked and prodded the scar for a few minutes, but Pierce got fed up and leaped off the table.

“Pierce, you should lie back down,” I said.

“I don’t take orders from you,” he said, venom dripped from his voice. He pulled the tattered remnants of his shirt over his shoulders, put on his shoulder holster, which still held his sidearm and headed for the door.

“Dr. Adam Klein is the Chief Medical Officer on this platform, and in matters of health, his word outranks mine,” the admiral said. You could feel the tension in the room Solid. Weighty. Pierce turned and glared at the admiral.

“I just…don’t want…to be…alone…” A cold feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. The creatures said similar things, and used the same vocal inflections.

Pierce drew his sidearm and shot the admiral in the face.

Before anyone registered what had happened, Pierce ripped into the two soldiers who had helped him into the bridge.

“Holy shit!” Ivy screamed.

Lieutenant Kul raised his sidearm and shot Pierce three times in the chest. He should have dropped; instead, he closed the distance between them and literally tore the man’s throat out.

“Adam! Hurry!” Ivy yelled. I could barely hear him over the sounds of death and my own heartbeat in my ears. Ivy half dragged me out the door to Command Central and we bolted down the corridor seeking safety.

Instead of going down to the medical lab, we reached the main elevator and Ivy slammed his hand against the ‘open’ button. We heard the faint cries of pain and the occasional gunshot. It sounded closer.

Finally the door opened and we hurried inside. Ivy pressed a button, but I didn’t see which one. I didn’t care at the moment. My brain struggled to process the image. I could slightly feel the elevator as it sped downwards, into the dark unknown of the Orbital Platform known as Leonidas.

“Ok, what the fuck was that?” I said, after a few moments of silence, startling Ivy. “Have your patients ever done that before?”

“Of course not!” He responded angrily. “Don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it?”

“He killed them,” I said in disbelief. “I knew I didn’t like Pierce, but I never thought he’d be the type to snap like that.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Pierce.” I looked at Ivy like he’d suddenly grown a second head. “I’m only saying it was strange. Did you notice he spoke like those three in the medical lab?”

“Do you think he was infected?” I asked him. “No. Has to be a coincidence. There’s no way the illness could mutate so fast.”

“I wouldn’t think so either, but how do you explain his suddenly healed wound?”

The question made me pause. “It doesn’t make sense for it to be a new symptom. Your previous patients all exploded, they didn’t heal themselves.”

“It also doesn’t make sense that there’d be something else that would make someone act like that.” I had to admit, he had a valid point and it made me feel uneasy.

“Whatever it is, it’s a lot more complicated than we thought,” I said, after a while.

The elevator doors slid open. I hadn’t noticed we had come to a stop.

“Where are we?” I asked. People were everywhere, more than on the Command Deck. They slept against the walls, children played as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

“We’re in Sector F,” he said matter-of-factly. “A lot of the lower sectors have been evacuated due to the sickness, and people have had to set up wherever they can find room.”

“How many sectors have been evacuated?” I asked. I knew this station was massive, with five decks per sector. I wondered how many people could be dead, or dying, down below.

“Sectors G through the third deck of N have completely gone dark,” he said.

I stopped in my tracks. It was thirty-eight decks. Thirty-eight decks full of people who were trying to live their lives. People who go to work, go to school, and watch holo-films on their weekends off.

“Look Adam, I know it’s hard,” Ivy said with concern written all over his face. “We can’t lose focus. If we fall apart, people will die. I know it seems like too much, but it’s the hand we’ve been dealt. I never had a choice in coming here, but you did, and although you thought it was a much lesser problem, most doctors wouldn’t accept the responsibility. That means something.”

Despite his younger age he had the wisdom of a seasoned doctor. This was in stark contrast to how he acted before, and I noticed he had stopped shaking. “What do you mean, you didn’t have a choice?”

“There’ll be time to explain later, but right now we have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”

We continued down the corridor, twisting and turning until finally we came to a door that had more in common with a vault. Ivy knocked three times.

“What the bloody hell do ya want?” A gruff voice yelled with a thick accent.

“Crowe! Open the damned door! It’s June!”

I had to smile at Ivy’s sudden harshness. It was so out of place that it was almost adorable. The sound of creaking metal was followed by a few bangs before the door’s mechanism kicked in. Finally, the door clicked open to reveal a huge man with a thick red beard.

“It’s June already?” He said as he came into the hall. “I thought it was August. How did I lose almost a whole year?”

“It’s September actually, but don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already?” Ivy scowled. Arms crossed. Brow furrowed. Another thing I had to remember to ask about if things aren’t insane for a few minutes.

“Ivy! I’m sorry, I’ve been so absorbed in my work,” he said, trailing off. “But you know all about that.”

“Indeed,” he said, coldly. “Can we come in? There’s been shocking developments.”

The goliath gazed at me with squinted eyes. He eyeballed me, and I couldn’t help but feel like a piece of meat. This man could eat me alive.

“Yeah, you’d better come in. Not safe out here,” he said. “I’ve found something too.”