Blaedergil's Host by C.M. Simpson (reading well .TXT) 📕

I didn’t understand any of it... except the part where they were ready to go back out into the lab proper, and we had to try a two-pronged attack.

Firstly, they’d solved the aerosol problem, and could get stuff they needed into, and then out through, the vents, but they needed me to tweak the humidity, the air temperature, and the rate of flow. Fine. I hacked them a path from the desk top, so they could see the interface, and then used the implant to dive into the code and change what needed changing.

While the scientist and I did that, the technician swapped out the equipment they’d been using to contaminate the air with virus, and placed the new set-up on a table beneath it. Delight helped her, but kept her Glazer to hand at all times. By the time we were done, the locking mechanism on the door to the lab had given way to the pressure of the plagued outside. The table still held.

I felt the difference in the air, almost as soon as I’d put the last adjustment in place.

“How long before this goes station-wide?” Delight asked.

“Forty minutes,” the scientist said, and I looked at the Odyssey agent.

We were both thinking the same thing—it was too long.

“What if one of the ships were to push the same stuff into the station from the concourse?” I asked.

“It would help, but I don’t know how much it would reduce the time by. You’ll need the masks. We’re adding the gas.”

I don’t get how they’d managed to combine the gas, and the anti-virus, but they had, and that was the mixture they pushed into the ventilation system. I contacted Tens over the comms.

“You need to seal the ship,” I said, but he disagreed.

“It’s a cure?”

“Sure,” and I wondered why he sounded so fatigued.

“Can you send the formulae to Doc?”

“Sure,” I said, and grabbed the scientist.

“They need to know the formulae,” I said, and he rattled off the settings for the replicator.

“You catch that?”

“Gotcha,” but Tens didn’t answer alone, and it puzzled me as to why Doc was in the command center.

“Tell the Odyssey ship to stay buttoned tight,” Tens said, and I got half an idea of what had gone down.

Oh. Well, fuck. Suddenly, I was really glad Tens had managed to lock the other ships into their moorings, and get the runaways to return. I was going to go Corovan-hunting, if I survived when this was done.

“Staying sealed is standard procedure,” Delight said, “but give me the formulae and I’ll pass that on.”

She pulled out a new charge for her Glazer, and handed another one over to me.

“We don’t know when they’ll fall over. Best to start out fresh.”

While I changed clips, the technician finished her set-up, and hurried over to a cabinet set beside the refrigeration units. She returned with four rebreathers, and masks.

“Sam and I will keep this going for as long as we can,” she said. “Just try and keep us safe.”

I wondered what else she thought we’d be doing, while they sent the cure... or, at least, a reprieve, to the rest of the station. It wasn’t exactly like Delight or I could leave the lab. We couldn’t even go into the vents. Firstly, because I’d reprogrammed the drones into a much more aggressive defensive pattern around the lab, and secondly, because the scientists who’d been infected by the spider mutation seemed to be at home up there, and we didn’t know how many of those there were.

Nope, we were going out via the corridors—just as soon as the plagued were comatose... or once the Odyssey team got here, whichever came first.

“Agents, hold your positions.” That voice was new. I wondered if she had a party line to my head, or if she’d just chosen that moment to get her ass into gear.

Delight shot me a sideways look, as I thought it.

“Coincidence,” she said, “but I’m sending them our location, anyway. I don’t want to be mistaken as hostile.”

That almost made me laugh. Hostile pretty much summed her up—and that was on a good day.

“Thanks a lot,” she muttered. “Make sure that thing’s set on stun.”

I checked the Glazer, and reduced the setting. We’d been killing the plagued out of necessity. With both sedative and cure in the air system, that wasn’t justifiable, any more. I sure as shit hoped they stunned like any other person, because the table across the door was starting to shift.

I looked at Delight, and she looked at me.

“Good luck,” I said to the scientists, and Delight and I moved forward to place our boots on the legs of the upturned table.

It wasn’t much of a brace, but all it had to do was slow them down long enough for us to plug the hole with their comatose bodies. And we only had to do that, until the sedative and cure had taken effect. Only. Now why did I get the impression that that was going to be a lot harder than it sounded?

I shifted so I had an angle through the wedge of light the plagued had forced between the door and the door-frame.

“Hold,” Delight said. “Don’t shoot, unless they’re going to make it through.”

Delight counselling restraint? I’d never thought to see the day.

Smart ass. Delight wasn’t impressed, but I could hear Mack and Tens laughing somewhere in the distance of my mind. Well, at least someone was entertained—even if they sounded on the edge of hysteria.

I watched as the plagued massed and shifted in the corridor, outside, not quite able to fathom why they’d come to the opening, stare at me, and then shift away, yielding their place to one of those behind them. Across from me, Delight watched the shift of their shadows, and frowned.

“What are you doing to them?” she asked, and I shrugged.

“Nothing. Just looking.”

“And you called me hostile,” she muttered. “You’re scaring them with just a look.”

“Maybe it’s my perfume.”

“I doubt it.”

“Hey.”

“We’ve got them.” Mariner Lead Scorvy said, his message crashing into my implant.