Mason, E, LT 2nd: he was there when I was losing my shit over you. he was there looking out for me when my dad died and I had no one else. I OWE him, Kady

ByteMe: he was there when i wasn’t, is what you’re saying

Mason, E, LT 2nd: jesus, this is NOT about you and me. TELL ME WHAT U KNOW

ByteMe: promise me u won’t do anything stupid. promise me u understand it won’t help him to have u in trouble

ByteMe: Ezra?

Mason, E, LT 2nd: fine i promise

ByteMe: i mean really promise. not say whatever you have to say to get what you need. i can’t lose you, Ez. you’re all i have.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: god, it’s really bad isn’t it?

ByteMe: u could make it worse if you do something stupid. put us both in danger.

Mason, E, LT 2nd: I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.

ByteMe: just cross your heart

Mason, E, LT 2nd: k

ByteMe: sent

INCEPT: 07/26/75 (11:17 shipboard time)

LOCATION: United Terran Navy Battlecarrier: Alexander (Hangar Bay 4)

OFFICER IDENT: Winifred McCall (UTN-961-641id)

RANK: First Lieutenant

_________________________________

At 19:06 (shipboard) on 07/25/75, Sigma Squad and I were scrambled to a Code Blue alert issued by Alexander command. Squad mustered in a timely fashion to deck 146, where we were briefed by Executive Officer Lia Myles on behalf of General Torrence.

Sit-rep: The Copernicus refugees quarantined in Hangar Bay 4 had engaged in some kind of riot in protest over their conditions—violence was ongoing. Sigma Squad was ordered to enter the bay and restore order. Video surveillance rigs within the bay had been disabled/destroyed, and bioscanners wouldn’t penetrate the bay walls, so we’d be proceeding blind. We were issued hot ballistics and authorized for lethal force. We were also equipped with Hazardous Materials kits, including fully-sealed Type-A envirosuits.

“Why the hazmat gear?” I asked.

I already knew the answer—scuttlebutt about the sickness on the Copernicus had been rife for months. Everyone knew odds were good at least a few of those refugees were carriers. I just wanted someone in command to acknowledge it.

XO Myles glared with those pretty eyes for a good long while before she answered. Myles doesn’t like me, see. She’s academy trained, and a politician born. She looks at the battlefield commission on my chest and presumes I think I’m better than her.

She’s a clever one.

“Excellent question, Lieutenant,” she finally answered. “We suspect a mutated strain of the Phobos virus—now a Class Alpha Zero pathogen—is loose in Bay 4. It’s possible none of the refugees are afflicted, however, we’re taking no chances. I re-iterate, the use of lethal force is authorized. No one without a sealed hazmat suit gets out of that bay alive.”

“You want us to shoot civilians.”

“I want you to protect the six thousand plus people in this fleet, Lieutenant. I want you to stop, by any means necessary, an afflicted body getting into the Alexander’s general population and spreading that pathogen aboard this ship.”

Hands on hips.

“I want you to do your job.”

A few of my rookies conscripted from the Kerenza refugees looked a little panicked at that notion. They might know people in the Hanger Bay 4 crowd, after all. They had no training with chemical agents or bio-weapons—after six months, most barely knew the business end of a VK-85 burst rifle or how to lace their boots right. As ranking officer, I had to toe the company line, but my 2IC, Sgt James McNulty, stepped up to ask the obvious questions I couldn’t.

“So if these civis are infected, why don’t we just leave them locked in the bay?”

“They have Copernicus engineering staff among them,” XO Myles replied. “They’re trying to break through the airlocks. Given the tools available, they’ll succeed in time.”

“Why don’t we just open the outer doors and space them?”

That was Sykes, one of my surlier corporals. Word around the barracks was he’d got a vidcall from his wife three days before the Kerenza attack, telling him she was running off with her psychoanalyst. She even took their dog. She hated dogs, apparently.

“Slam a lid on that noise right now, Corporal,” I ordered.

“It’s a valid question,” Myles said.

My eyebrows hit the ceiling at that one. Cold as the belly of the void, little Lia Myles.

She turned to Sykes. “The refugees have disabled the locking mechanism on the outer bay doors. We can no longer operate them from the bridge. They must have suspected flushing them was an option.”

“Wonder what gave them that idea,” McNulty muttered.

“Further questions?” she asked, looking at me.

Silence.

“Right. Good hunting.”

We suited up. No banter among my boys. No jokes. Bad sign. I was watching my Kerenza rooks close, wondering if they were going to hold nerve when ordered to open fire on people they knew. If the concept of the “greater good” was going to sink through to those trigger fingers, past notions like loyalty and friendship and love.

In the end, I made the call to bench them—keep them in reserve outside the second airlock. It meant Sigma was going in short-handed, but there wasn’t a soul among them who didn’t look relieved.

We proceeded to the hangar decks, bridge control cycling us through the three heavy-duty doors, one at a time—we still had our all-access passes, but command had issued a security override on Bay 4. Each airlock closed behind before the new one opened in front, cycled through a full atmo purge. Command reported the first inner door had already been compromised—seemed the mice had been busy. Ordering my reserves to hold position at the inner door and kill anything that didn’t ID itself, I requested command open the final seal.