Welcome to the Waratah (Empire's Legacy)

Fifty feet into the ship, the passageway split in three and the party came to a halt as Amy consulted her notes.

“We entered the Waratah at her stern, on the central deck,” she said. Pointing left without looking up, she continued, “Crew quarters are portside—all five decks, more or less. Straight on and down one deck is the engine room. The flight deck is below the engine room. Two decks above us is the bridge deck.” She squinted through her visor at the rough map of the ship, trying to read through a smudge. “Looks like the medical bay and the labs are starboard. On this deck is medical, the mess, the gym…” She lowered the notepad and looked at Gus. “Where do you fancy starting?”

“I want to take a crack at those engines,” Taz said, rubbing his hands together. “This beaut’s got streamlined engines and I want to see how they’ve run the leaders from the engine room up to her nacelles. They’re half the size of our engines and she’s twice the size of the Waratah. Either this ship was a slow-ass tugboat, or those babes packed some serious punch.” He looked pleadingly at his captain.

“Get out of here,” Gus said. “Benji, go with him.”

Taz grinned. “Straight on and down one deck, Doc? Great. Call you if we need anything.” He clapped Amy on the shoulder so hard she was knocked off balance and strode off down the corridor, Benji trotting behind.

“Don’t turn anything on!” Gus shouted, muttering as he turned back to Amy, “You might blow us all up.”

She gave him an impish smile. “Got the spooks, Gus?”

“Hate empty ships,” he replied. “This one’s about as empty as I’ve ever seen.”

“Odd attitude for someone in the salvage business.”

“Yeah, well, we all have our quirks.”

Amy shrugged. “She’s just a ship. She can’t help it if her crew left.”

“About that…” Gus frowned. “What did happen to the crew of the Waratah?”

“The records aren’t very clear about that,” Amy said, brushing past him. “Did you want to go to the bridge deck, medical, the flight deck…?”

Gus stood at the cross-section, hands on his hips, and turned in a circle. “Eh,” he said at last. “I’m itching to get my hands on whatever’s down on the flight deck, but it’ll wait.”

“Straight on and up, then,” Amy said, tucking her notepad back into its pocket.

Blue and orange plaques on the bulkheads pointed them down a passageway that dead-ended at a pair of doors labeled ‘Bridge Access’. Gus stabbed the glowing blue button beside the doors and visibly jumped when they hissed to the side. Amy snorted.

“This is nice,” she said, stepping inside.

“What is it?” Gus asked suspiciously, still standing in the corridor.

“It’s a lift,” she replied, giving him a look. “Get in. It won’t bite.”

He stepped gingerly over the threshold, moving quickly inside as Amy pushed another button to close the doors. “It might fall.”

“Yes, and you might fall off a ladder.” She frowned at him, pressed flat against the bulkhead opposite. “I’d have thought you’d be fascinated. No one’s been able to duplicate this kind of lift technology since the Empire fell. All we’ve got are those damned pulley-system rattle-boxes, and you won’t see me getting in one of those.” She turned her attention to the panel by the door, adding over her shoulder, “I’d rather hitch a ride in a hopper to the top floor of the Commissionate than risk a rattle-box.” She flicked a switch and stumbled backwards as the lift hummed to life, the bulkheads glowing blue.

“Welcome to the ERV Waratah,” said a pleasant, disembodied male voice.

“What the hell is that?” Gus demanded.

“This is Welcome Program November One. We regret a personal representative of the crew was unable to greet you upon your arrival. We hope that this does not inconvenience your stay aboard the Waratah. Upon arrival at the bridge, your party will be greeted by Captain Alexander. Should you require assistance before this time or later during this stay, this program may be reactivated by keying WPN1 at any of the access panels located conveniently throughout the ship. We welcome you again to the ERV Waratah and hope that your stay is both an informative and a restful one.”

The bulkheads dimmed, though they continued to glow, and the lift was silent for several minutes before Amy at last said,

“Well, that was interesting.” She peered overhead and then ran her fingers along the bulkheads. “No obvious evidence of speakers, so they must be built into the bulkheads themselves.”

“Odd sort of welcome for a science ship,” Gus commented.

“Mmm. Sounded like the kind of welcome you’d get on a pleasure planet.”

“You have a lot of experience with pleasure planets?”

The comm crackled with static and then, through the hissing, came Taz’s voice. “Yo, you two there? Just had a strange encounter with a Welcome Program.”

Gus glanced at Amy. “November?”

“Great month,” Taz replied. “It has Thanksgiving. What’s not to like? But no, this was Welcome Program Tango Two. Took a real shine to Benji-boy.”

“Hah,” Benji chimed in. “Dam thing would’ve dragged me to the medical bay if it’d had arms.”

“What’s the point of having two Welcome Programs?” Gus said. “Why not use the same one in both places at once?”

Amy bit the inside of her cheek. “Taz, what did yours say? Was it specific to your destination? Benji, you said something about medical?”

“Super polite,” Taz said. “Welcome to the ship, sorry no one greeted you, when you get to the engine room you’ll be welcomed by Chief Roberts. Benji—”

“That thing was not happy about me,” Benji said. “Polite as you like, but it wanted me in medical. Think it thought I was about to drop down dead. Fair enough. Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s thought that.”

“Ship must’ve run medical passes on us when we came aboard,” Amy said. “I guess. I’ve read about that but not actually experienced it. I guess there’s multiple Welcome Programs for different destinations?” She lifted her hand to run her fingers through her hair and bumped up against her helmet. Grimacing, she let it drop back to her side. “You’re not ill, are you, Benji?”

“Fit enough, thanks.”

She shrugged. “I dunno, I guess we can keep going. I’m surprised the programs triggered at all, to be honest.” She caught Gus’s raised eyebrows as she turned to fiddle with the panel and said, “Look, I don’t know everything. There was a lot of data lost in the ’21 Riots, and there’s only so much you can recover from half-destroyed ships.” Poking at the innards of the panel, she added, “That’s why this is such an exciting find. Welcome Programs are only the beginning.”

The lift came to a smooth halt, the blue light around them brightening as the Welcome Program came back online.

“Welcome to the Waratah bridge,” said the Welcome Program. “You are advised to refrain from touching instrument panels without permission and to abide at all times by any instructions given by any member of the crew. Please ensure you are not actively blocking any member of the crew at any time. Thank you, and please enjoy your stay.”

The glow from the bulkheads faded away entirely and the doors hissed apart. The man who had been propped against the other side fell inwards, his torso angling across Amy’s boots. Amy yelped and leaped backwards into the lift, slamming hard against Gus as he lunged forward. The body rolled to the right until the doorframe forced it to stop, leaving the corpse posed at an unpleasant, twisted angle.

Amy and Gus stood at the back of the lift and stared down at the unexpected discovery. At last Gus said,

“I don’t think that’s what the Welcome Program had in mind when it said ‘enjoy your stay’.” He leaned forward as far as he could without stepping towards the body. “I see skin. If this guy’s been dead for two hundred years, shouldn’t he be dust by now? Ashes? Atoms, floating in the proverbial wind?”

Amy smacked his arm. “A little respect,” she said. “Snark isn’t going to get us anywhere.”

Gus edged nearer and crouched down beside the man, gingerly lifting the hand draped across the left lapel. “Well, the Welcome Program got one thing right.” He looked up. “Can’t say we weren’t greeted by Captain Alexander.” Sitting back on his heels, he fixed Amy with an intent look. “You want to explain why there’s a dead person on a ship that’s supposed to be abandoned?”

“Gus? Doc?”

Gus tapped his comm. “Go ahead, Taz.”

“Yeah, so, funny story. Punch line involves three dead guys and a really antsy salvage man.”

“I don’t like this,” Gus said to Amy, and then, “We’ve got one too, Taz. Tell Benji to keep breathing until we figure out what’s going on.”

“Roger that, Skipper. We’ll have a look around and see what we can find.”

Amy stepped over the corpse and onto the bridge. “There’s more in here.”

The lift opened on the back of an egg-shaped bridge, onto a clear platform on which stood the captain’s chair and two streamlined consoles; the column of blue and orange postings by the lift indicated one should stop here for navigation and helm control. Directly below, visible beneath the platform and accessible via a set of spiral stairs near the lift, was the weapons platform; the stairs continued up through the central platform to an upper one containing ship’s operations.

The number of corpses on the bridge reinforced the fact that the Waratah was not, contrary to expectation, empty after all, although it appeared that the bridge, at least, had been operated by a skeleton crew in the Waratah’s last days. The weapons platform was abandoned, but a body was slumped over helm control, one hand dangling over the edge of the console, fingers just brushing the deck. Another body lay on the operations platform with its cheek pressed into the deck, several steps away from the main console; Amy glanced up as she crossed the central platform and flinched when she found herself looking up into a staring eye.

“Because this isn’t creepy as all get out,” Gus said, stepping up behind Amy. “Any thoughts?”

“Yeah,” she said. “There are not supposed to be dead people on my ship.”

“No shit. Ramina, you still there?”

“I see you’ve found an emergency despite my warning.” De Sara sounded less than amused. “I take it this means you’d like me to suit up.”

“Please do. Bring a med pack—I don’t know what the facilities are like on this ship.”

“It’s a science research vessel, Gus,” Amy said. “Her facilities are bound to be state of the art. Beyond what we’re used to.”

Ignoring her, Gus repeated, “Bring a med pack, Ramina.” He stared at the helmsman for a moment and then added, “I’ll meet you in the medical bay with one of the bodies.”

“Copy that. See you soon.”

“What are you doing?”

Amy looked up from the navigation console. “Trying to see where the Waratah was headed before she got trapped in the asteroid field. Looks like she was headed towards what are now the outliers…” She toggled through a series of starmaps. “These are amazing. Did you know that in ’82, before the first hints of unrest, they were talking about developing the technology to build a bridge from one galaxy to the next? Edward Carter was a visionary.”

“I thought you were interested in the past, not the future.”

She pulled her gaze from the maps and met his eyes, surprised. “I am. Edward Carter’s dreams of a galaxy bridge are the past. I sure as hell don’t see any of the Commission’s scientists following in his footsteps.” Her fingers traced over the constellations. “The past tells us things about our future, Gus. Why bother looking to the future when it’s clear it’s not going anywhere any time soon?”

Gus leaned a hip against a console and folded his arms. “You think we’re stagnant.”

“I think we’re being crushed under a ruinous government with little interest in anything but power and furthering their own interests, and it’s damnation for any who try to swim against the tide. You saw what happened to the rioters on Meridani.”

“That was different. That was suicide.”

“So you’re telling me you’re happy living in the present?” She pulled up another starchart. “That when you look to the future, you see sunshine and clear sailing for years to come, without an anchor in sight?”

He shifted his weight. “Sure.”

“Bullshit.”

Gus’s brows lifted. “Excuse me?”

Amy gazed steadily at him. “I don’t know what it is that’s back there, Gus, that specter in your past, but I know it haunts your footsteps and I know it’s at your door. It’s there when you wake up in the morning and it’s there when you go to bed at night. You see it in the mirror and out of the corner of your eye and it’s never going to stop tying you to the past.” A smile touched her lips. “It’s in your eyes, just like it’s in mine, just like it’s in de Sara’s and Benji’s and Kate’s. There’s no moving forward, not really, no seeing that bright and beautiful future that could be, should be, might be, because all the reality that there is, is tied up somehow with the Commission, and there can’t be a future without getting rid of them.” She stared at him for a moment more, and then turned and began scrolling rapidly through navigation control’s menu. “That’s why I’m a historian, Gus. I’d rather look at a brighter past than consider a dismal future.”

There was silence from behind her. Then: “Ramina will be waiting. Let us know if you leave the bridge.”

Amy made a mock salute and kept her position at navigation until the lift doors closed behind Gus and the body of Captain Alexander. Then she slid to the deck with her back against the console and rested her arms on her knees. She stared across the bridge without seeing anything, her mind millions of miles away.

 

More of the blue and orange signs pointed Gus to the medical bay. He found Ramina already set up in a facility that far surpassed the hospitals on Commissioner ships and left what the Sophia called medical unworthy of the name.

Ramina nodded at Gus as he came through the door. “As you can see,” she said, gesturing at the half-circle of beds in the adjacent alcove, “your specimen is appreciated but unnecessary.”

Gus set Captain Alexander down against the wall and looked into the next room. Each of the stationary beds held an occupant, the blankets collapsed over sunken flesh. Additional beds had been set up in negative space, spilling out of the alcove and into the adjoining laboratory. Despite the overcrowding, care had clearly been taken to keep the patients to one side of the lab, keeping the workspaces free; more than one body still sat at its desk.

“There’s at least twenty people in here,” Gus said, turning back to de Sara. “Plus what, four or five that might be actual medical staff? That’s about a quarter of the crew in medical alone.”

De Sara crossed to the lab and removed a corpse from a stool in order to sit down. Observing Gus’s expression, she said, “You’ve known me long enough by now, Octavius, to know it isn’t that I don’t care.”

“You’ve known me long enough to know I can’t help wishing you’d show you do.”

She looked down at the counter, a faint frown on her face. “It’s not our way. Ah.” She tapped the blank white workspace and it dissolved beneath her fingers, solidifying again as a counter-wide touchscreen tablet. The right-hand side contained the logbook and notes of the scientist relegated to the floor; the left side contained equations. She attempted to write on the screen with a stylus and was promptly confronted with a request for a password.

“Can you just look through it?” Gus asked. “We don’t really want to change or input anything at the moment.”

Ramina shrugged and tapped the screen again. The password request vanished, leaving her with a counter-sized notebook. Catching her bottom lip between her teeth, she leaned forward and began to read. Gus drifted around the edges of the room.

“Oh,” Ramina said, after half an hour and several screens.

Gus turned. “Oh?”

“We need to get Benji off this ship.”

Without waiting for further explanation, Gus tapped the comm open. “Benji. It’s Gus. Where are you?”

“Uh, still in Engineering. Taz has me under the engine leaders. What’s up?”

“Ramina wants you off the ship.”

There was silence on the other end of the line for an uncomfortably long time. Then: “What is it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

The sound of Benji swallowing hard could be heard through the static. The fear in his voice came through even more clearly. “I’ll be off as soon as I get out from under the engines.”

“Let us know when you’re back safe on the Sophia. Go through decon twice. Three times, if it’ll make you feel better. Sorry.”

“Catch you later, Cap. Thanks.”

Benji’s comm clicked off. Amy stepped into the med bay and said, “I don’t understand. What’s the deal with Benji?”

Gus and Ramina looked at her and then at each other.

“I can’t,” Ramina said. “Doctor–patient confidentiality.” She slid off the stool and disappeared into the alcove.

“Come in, Jones,” Gus said. “We seem to have discovered the ship of the dead.”

Amy ventured further into medical and stopped with her back to the alcove. Behind her, Ramina bent over one of the corpses on the bed. “Benji?”

Gus leaned against the counter. “You know the children-in-space laws, yeah?”

Surprised, Amy said, “Sure. Can’t keep a kid in space longer than, what, about a month?”

“Yeah. You know why?”

“Uh, not first hand, no. But you hear stories. Too long in space when the body’s still forming, you get distortions. Deformities. Abnormalities. Pregnant people aren’t supposed to travel off-dirt at all.”

“Stories have a nasty habit of having root in fact,” Gus said. He looked tired. “Benji’s parents had an old freighter, one of those really old clunkers that gets nowhere fast and half the time goes backwards. His parents did their nine dirtside, left Benji with Grandma for eight years, and then pulled him onto the freighter to help out with maintenance in those places adults have difficulty reaching. He spent seven years on the freighter before Grandma noticed he was gone and yanked him back dirtside. Damaged him permanently.”

“Noticed he’s on the short side.”

“Least of his problems. At the top of the list are the heart defect, deformed kidneys, and shitty immune system. The last is the one we’re concerned about here.” He paused. “Not that the others wouldn’t equally fuck him over.”

“Wouldn’t he, you know, be safer dirtside?”

Gus laughed. “Ironically, as it’s space that screwed him over in the first place, he’s actually safest in space. Dirtside he’ll breathe in more things that can kill him every second than he’ll breathe in every year out here. The only people he’s ever in contact with out here are us, and we go through decon every time we come onto the ship. And he almost never leaves it except in a suit.” Worry crossed his face. “We don’t usually encounter dead people. Speaking of,” he said, focusing his attention on Ramina, “what the hell happened on this ship?”

“Disease,” Ramina said, rejoining them. “I only skimmed the notes, but the first victim, Terry Monaco, arrived in medical complaining of fever, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and general malaise. Several days later, he developed further symptoms, including bloody vomit, diarrhea, and a painful rash that made it difficult for him to sit or lay still.”

“Christ, Ramina,” Gus said. “Do we need to know that?”

Ramina raised her eyebrows. “It’s relevant. Shall I continue?” Gus sighed. “Very well. Four other crew members had presented with Monaco’s original symptoms by the time his condition worsened. His was the first death. His condition worsened to the point of severe hemorrhage, and all attempts by the doctors proved ineffective or exacerbated his symptoms. He died ten days after first checking into medical, of systemic organ failure. By that point, fourteen other crew members and one of the doctors had also fallen ill.”

“That sounds an awful lot like an outbreak,” Gus said uneasily.

“Precisely,” de Sara said. “Monaco worked in the infectious diseases laboratory on the deck below this one.”

“Surely they weren’t careless enough to release something they were working on,” Gus said.

“Accidents can happen in the most carefully controlled environment,” Ramina said. “However—”

“This is pointless,” Amy interrupted. “We can go around in circles theorizing, or we can look at the records and find out.” Gus frowned at her. “Research, Gus. It’s not the end of the world. Though it’s not quite what I imagined I’d be doing on board an Apollo.”

“Yeah, you know, I think I’ll let you two research to your heart’s content.” He stared at the corpses in the alcove. “Okay. You two go down to the infectious diseases lab. Figure out what happened. I don’t want to get further into a salvage job without knowing exactly what we’re dealing with. Not least because I need Benji and if we’re going to be working on a ship full of corpses and a potentially still deadly virus—”

“It’s reasonably unlikely it’s still dangerous after all this time,” Ramina said. She considered. “Well. Fairly unlikely.”

“—potentially still dangerous virus,” Gus reiterated, “then I want to make sure we’re kitted out in suits designed to deal with biohazards.”

“Lucky for you I know where we can get those,” Amy said.

“Lucky for you, you have the funds for it,” Gus said. “Now go. Get. Research. Keep me updated.” He watched as Amy and Ramina walked out the door and activated the comm. “Taz? I’m going to the flight deck. Be a mate and join me there. I’d like to get my hands on some of this bird’s tech.”

Taz laughed. “Copy that, Skipper. Meet you there.”

Gus glanced around the medical bay of corpses and shivered. Ship full of tech, ship full of corpses. The whole damn thing made his skin crawl.

 

“Holy shit,” Amy said, pushing back from her workstation in the diseases lab. Ramina looked up. “The people on this ship were killed by Warnao fever.”

Ramina raised her eyebrows. “I’m not familiar with it.”

“It’s a viral hemorrhagic fever. Really nasty.” Amy shook her head. “I thought I recognized the symptoms. It was eradicated over two hundred years ago.”

“I wasn’t aware that you specialized in historical diseases.”

“I don’t.” She lifted her hand to rub her head and whacked herself in the visor. “I mean, I couldn’t tell you which family or order or whatever the virus is part of. The only reason I recognize it is because it was a huge pain in the ass for the Empire for about fifty years, out in the rural areas where hygienic practices weren’t ideal and there wasn’t much in the way of trained medical staff or hospitals. It spread like hell.”

A frown creased Ramina’s brow. “I’m not familiar with Warnao fever specifically, but my understanding of viral hemorrhagic fevers is that, in general, they transmit though bodily fluids. Saliva, blood, semen—” Seeing Amy’s face, she cut herself off, paused, and then continued, “The problem is that while the Waratah presumably uses a water purification system to filter out contaminates, the primary danger on a ship like this would not be the water system, as it would in a rural environment, but rather general contact in which fluids are potentially exchanged. Particles exchanged during conversation could be sufficient for transmission and infection, with the possibility of surface transmission as well, depending on the rate of survival outside of the body. Unless the Empire automatically sterilizes the air and all surfaces with which biological matter comes into contact?”

Amy shook her head. “The Waratah is a tremendously advanced ship by Commission standards, like all Empire-era ships. But to the best of my knowledge…no. They didn’t have that kind of sterilization tech.”

“Monaco worked in this lab,” Ramina said, folding her arms across her chest, a pensive look on her face. “Are we working on the supposition that he unintentionally released the disease on which he was working?”

“I can’t imagine he intentionally released it,” Amy pointed out. “I guess a terrorist might intentionally infect themselves, but—hell, I don’t think even the most fervent belief would convince me to sacrifice myself on the altar of Warnao fever.”

“Assuming he did so by accident,” Ramina said, “would he have realized?” She hesitated and then added, “My own lab work suggests that he must have done, but then people are often careless when it’s most important.”

“The incubation period for Warnao can be as long as a month,” Amy said, mind whirring. “It can be as short as three days, but it’s certainly possible that Monaco didn’t realise at the time that he’d infected himself. He might have cleaned up as usual and moved on to another experiment. Even if someone had gone to look into what he’d been doing, his notes in the days around the time he checked himself into medical might not have reflected what he’d been working on when he was infected, and might not have helped.” She paused and then added, “Although you’d think that at some point in the ten days it took him to die he’d have thought to mention which disease he’d likely managed to kill himself with.”

Ramina shook her head. “You’re being too rational, when disease is anything but. By the second day, Monaco couldn’t talk, and he was too weak to write. And his initial symptoms mimicked the flu.”

“Ugh.” Amy dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling. “Okay, different tactic. This is a research ship. Have you run across anything that suggests they might have kept a vaccine or antiviral? It was an inactive, eradicated disease at the time, so theoretically there ought to be one or the other in existence.”

“No,” Ramina said, “but that hasn’t been my focus. I’ll redirect my queries.” She glanced at Amy. “If we intend to maintain a presence on this ship, we should take every precaution. Any exposure will almost certainly result in our deaths without the benefit of the vaccine beforehand or the quick assistance of antiviral after.”

“But on that note,” Amy said, turning her attention back to the console, “if they had the antiviral, why wouldn’t they have used it? Even if Monaco couldn’t provide the details of his infection, you’d think the other scientists would have figured it out and taken steps, not least because, initial flu-like symptoms aside, hemorrhagic fever is…not subtle. Especially since they should have been more familiar with Warnao fever than us. The last recorded case—which was not on this ship, by the way—was during their lifetimes.”

Nearly a half hour passed in silence before Amy hissed in frustration and banged another drawer closed. “There’s nothing here.”

Ramina looked up. “It can’t have vanished,” she said reasonably, pulling up the manifest they’d found listing vaccine and antiviral to double check.

Amy shot her an annoyed look. “You tell me. I’ve been through every sample drawer twice and I haven’t found a thing.”

De Sara turned and leaned back against the console. “I find it highly unlikely that they simply grew legs and walked out of the lab. Unless you’re suggesting malicious intent on the part of inanimate objects.”

“You’re the medic,” Amy said peevishly. “You tell me.” Receiving no response, she walked across to the only cold-storage unit she hadn’t checked and released the door. “Nothing in here but blood,” she called, tilting her head to read the labels. “Perry…Alexander…Nixon…Clarkson… Must be blood samples from the crew.”

A hand landed on Amy’s shoulder. “So have we found anything?”

“Son of a bitch!” Amy shrieked, jerking away from the unexpected contact. Straightening up, she turned and shot Gus an annoyed look, trying to will her pulse to calm. “Was that necessary? Christ.” Ignoring his amused look, she said, “Find anything interesting on the flight deck?”

“Hopper pods,” he said with a grin. “We’ve got just enough room for one on the Sophia so I’ve got Taz and Benji masterminding the transfer.”

Amy stared at him. “You’re transferring equipment off the Waratah?” she squeaked.

“Problem?”

“You should have asked me first! All of this equipment is incredibly rare, and—”

“It’s all in a hell of a lot better condition than anything on the Sophia,” Gus cut in, “and having a hopper will mean we have the ability to move from the Sophia dirtside without needing to dock at a spaceport and take a transport down. Not that there’s often an occasion for that, but it might come in handy.” Seeing her expression, he tapped the underside of her helmet with his glove. “Cheer up, Jones. You do remember we’re in the salvage business, right? That’s why you hired us. We’re not here to populate a museum.”

“Yes, but—”

“What have you two found?”

“Nothing useful,” Amy said crossly.

“The manifest indicates that samples of the virus, vaccine, and antiviral were all present in small quantities on board,” Ramina said. “Here, in Monaco’s lab. It isn’t explicitly stated, but there are a few notes that seem to indicate it was being studied for deliberate application of viral weaponry.”

“Biological warfare,” Gus said grimly. “Why the hell, given they’d just got rid of the damn thing?”

“There was a faction that broke away from the Empire, quite late,” Amy said. “Given to…nasty tactics. My theory is that that faction eventually developed into the Commission, although there is an admitted lack of evidence that—” She caught Gus’s eye and cut herself off. “Point being,” she said after a moment, “the Empire may have been considering increasing the order of magnitude to which they responded to that faction’s actions.” She shrugged.

“Speculation about the past is all very well,” Ramina said, “but to bring us back to the present, although we know the vaccine and antiviral as well as the virus were of a certainty on this ship, we have not been able to locate any of them. Due to the swiftness with which the virus overtook the crew and their apparent failure to identify the disease afflicting them and therefore take appropriate countermeasures with the resources available, it seems most likely that the vaccine and antiviral were inadvertently moved by a member of the crew without realizing their importance.” She hesitated and then added, “Of course, as we have not accounted for every member of the crew, I suppose it is possible that healthy crewmembers were vaccinated and abandoned ship with the antiviral as an insurance policy?”

“You can rule that out,” Gus said. “Taz and I did a sweep of the rest of the ship while you two were occupied. The rest of the crew’s accounted for, checked against the computer records. I’m guessing Captain Alexander restricted non-essential personnel to quarters in an attempt to stop the spread, because aside from the population in medical bay, it looks like most of the crew died in their bunks. There were a few in the labs and a couple on the bridge and in engineering, but we did a headcount and it came out to one hundred and eight.” He looked at Amy.

She shrugged. “Sounds about right. So no one made it off the ship alive.”

De Sara made an impatient noise. “I’m sorry, but if no one left the ship, and no one moved anything, then where have the samples pertaining to Warnao fever gone?”

The three stared at each other for a moment.

“Gus,” Amy said slowly. “You remember when we first came aboard, how the ship pressurized automatically?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Remember how I said it shouldn’t have done that?”

“Yeah.”

Amy leaned forward and braced her arms on the edge of the counter. “And the Welcome Programs automatically activated.”

“What does that signify?” Ramina asked.

“The ship should have powered down two hundred years ago,” Amy said. “And stayed that way.”

“The crew was sick,” Gus said. “Dying. You said she should have powered down when the crew abandoned ship, but they never abandoned ship—they just died off. Maybe no one was left to power her down.”

Amy shook her head. “The Waratah is a Mark IV Isis computer system. She was top of the line then, which means we don’t really have a hope in hell now of understanding how the system actually functions, but it’s an incredibly clever system. It will power down and seal itself if and when the crew abandons ship, but following the same logic, it will also power down and seal itself when there are no longer any life signs aboard. Basically, she becomes a sealed tomb, floating through space. Even partial derelicts have that protocol in effect. Oh.” She turned around abruptly, her eyes wide. “That’s what’s been bothering me.” She stared at de Sara.

“Oh,” de Sara said, her eyes flickering from Amy’s face to the door and back. “Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Amy. “You see it too.”

“Someone want to give me a hint?”

“It’s the bodies,” said Ramina. “It’s the state of the bodies.”

Gus looked blank. “So?”

“Decomposition on a ship like this would probably be fairly slow,” de Sara said. “There’s no insects or heat to speed up the process, no animals to consume the flesh and organs, and the ship’s water and air filtration and purification systems would reduce the amount of bacteria that, dirtside, would move things along more quickly. The body will decompose regardless; it’s a natural process once death occurs and it can’t be stopped.” She took a deep breath. “The disease spread quickly once Monaco was infected; the further it spread, the less detailed the doctors’ notes become, but extrapolating outwards I’d estimate the entire crew was probably dead in about a month. If we autopsied everyone, we’d likely find that not everyone died of Warnao fever; in every population you have people who are immune or resistant or those whose systems are strong enough for them to fight through and recover. With a disease like this, however, those few probably had no time to recover before they were trying to care for those who were ill, and we’d likely find they died of exhaustion or starvation.”

“You’re getting sidetracked,” Amy said. “Decomp.”

“Oh,” de Sara said. “Yes. If the ship sealed after the entire crew was dead, as Amy says, then the earliest deaths would show more advanced decomposition than the later deaths, as is the nature of such things—”

Impatient, Amy interrupted, saying, “The thing is, once the ship sealed, all those corpses should have been frozen. Not literally frozen, but—uh—put in stasis. They wouldn’t have continued to decompose. That’s the thing with tomb ships. They keep bodies preserved until someone can find them and put them to rest. Something to do with religious beliefs.” She shrugged. “Not my field. Anyway. You see the problem.”

Gus still looked confused. “Not really.”

“Wha—really?” Amy stared at him. “Right. Bodies dead, anywhere from three weeks to a day. The Waratah powers down and seals herself when the last lifesign is extinguished. We come along and the ship is already powered up and pressurizing, the Welcome Programs are activating, and the bodies are in a state of decomposition more consistent with—” She looked at Ramina.

“Two to three months,” de Sara said. “Roughly. It could be more; as I said before, the conditions on the ship are likely to promote slow decomposition. Like Dr. Jones, this is not my particular field of expertise.”

“Something broke the stasis seal,” Gus said.

“He finally gets it,” Amy exclaimed. “Gold star to you.”

He shot her a look. “Don’t be an ass. What could do that?”

“Oh, dammit, I don’t know!” Amy cried, throwing up her hands and turning her back. She leaned on the counter again, nibbling her lower lip. “Although…there is one thing,” she said after a moment. “And it would probably answer all of our questions.” She pushed herself upright and faced Gus and de Sara.

Gus crossed his arms. “Out with it, Jones.”

Amy hoisted herself up onto the edge of the counter and sat with her legs dangling. “If someone else arrived here after my scout first located the ship but before we got back with the Sophia, and had entered the ship, it would have broken the stasis seal. Decomp would have started back up again. Unless they were in a hurry, the natural course of action would be to hit up the bridge first; it’s the easiest place to access the main computer and, if looking for something specific, to determine where it is. The Welcome Program subroutines were probably activated accidentally.”

“You think someone came on board to steal the vaccine and antiviral?” Gus asked.

De Sara stirred. “There would be no point. Neither has any purpose if there is no Warnao fever.”

“So someone came for the virus.”

“Well, I’d be whoever broke the stasis field is the same person who’s responsible for the disappearance of the virus et al.,” Amy said. “I think ship’s manifest is a matter of public record, although ‘public record’ is a relative phrase, since the number of people with access to those records is limited—graduate students and students with special permission at the University, members of the government, and upper-level military could all have access, but that’s still a pretty limited number, and the list gets even shorter when you consider who’d even be looking at Empire-era ships in the first place. Especially if they knew enough to look for an extinct virus on a ship that might or might not still exist.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her thighs, hands dangling loosely between her knees. “Empire history gets covered in entry-level courses at the University, but it’s pretty cursory and so there’s only a few students who do much with it past their first and second years.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever run across anyone in the Commissioner Corps with much of an interest in the Empire,” Gus said. “Not to say there’s not someone out there.”

“I’d guess we’re looking at someone in the government. Probably upper level.” As the words left her mouth an unnerving thought twisted its way out of her core, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. Of course. Made sense.

“I think we are overlooking the most important question,” Ramina said from Amy’s left. “If someone did come aboard this ship and take the items related to Warnao fever, then what we really ought ot be asking ourselves is what have they taken it for?”

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Find the rest of Empire’s Legacy here.