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“Get rid of it, get rid of it immediately!” Irit rasped.
Senna pointed at the ghastly face drawn on the quarian helmet. “Yorrik?” he said. “Who is that?”
“Gallows humor: Senna’Nir vas Keelah Si’yah, right now that is my best friend in the world. With growing defensiveness: It has been hours. I was lonely. Ysses does not like me. Ysses does not have a face. Ysses does not know anything about cell replication or surface proteins. Horatio knows a great deal. With growing guilt concerning the appearance of recent actions: I named him Horatio. Exhausted defiance: Do you like him? You should like him. He is the one with the answers.”
In all the time Senna’Nir and Yorrik had spent together, apparently the elcor had never noticed that only female quarians wore those patterned lavender hoods. “Horatio” was not a he. But Senna saw no purpose in pointing that out just now. You couldn’t talk the old doctor out of anything once he had his mind made up.
“Where the hell did you get it?” Senna hated not being able to be in there with his friend. He felt useless out here in the hall, trapped away from what mattered most in this moment. Were they safe out here? They must be. That was the function of an emergency lockdown.
“Shifting blame: Anax found it,” Yorrik droned. “Urgent query: Is this really what you want to talk about right now?”
The hanar bobbed up and down on its levitation pack. “This one wishes to assure the commander that the Enkindlers have provided a miracle in our hour of need. If Analyst Therion had not secured this clothing, the autopsies would have concluded poorly.”
“You couldn’t use a microscope?” the volus grumbled. “It’s a kid’s toy. Surely the two of you intellectual giants can figure it out.”
Ysses lifted one rosy tentacle and activated the power on the massive blocky microscope sitting on a pile of spare parts. A foot-high hologram of a krogan drill sergeant flickered to life on top of the machine.
“Greetings, young warrior!” the krogan educational VI bellowed. “Ambush slide A and overwhelm its defenses, soldier! Go! Go! Go! Seize Slide A in your mighty fist and spill the blood of the immersion oil onto its miserable flesh! Did you hear me, young champion? I said make a mighty fist! Now puncture the staging clips with the enemy carcass of Slide A and interrogate it for information! That is the sorriest excuse for science I’ve ever seen, grunt! Do it again!”
The hanar switched the microscope off again. “This device is extremely stressful to use,” it said. “It also lacks in-depth analytical capability. It could only reveal the presence of the problem, not its n
ature. Additionally, this one has argued many times that attempts to control the tendency of nature toward entropy are by their nature futile. This one accepts the end of days. It has no need to know the name of its killer.”
Yorrik grunted and said to Senna: “Plea for sympathy: Do you see what I have been dealing with?”
Anax Therion and Borbala Ferank arrived at medbay as the hanar finished speaking, loaded out with the contents of the small arms locker.
“Senna,” Anax said, and nodded at him.
“Anax,” Senna answered, and nodded back.
“The guests are all here,” Ferank said in her habitual half-growl. “Let’s get the orgy started. I presume we’re all going to die?”
The batarian looked expectantly at the commander, then into the quarantined medbay clinic. Yorrik said nothing. He shifted uncomfortably on his long toe knuckles. Ysses hung in the air with a vaguely nihilistic sheen to it. The color drained from Borbala’s face.
“Oh, fuck, we are,” she said.
“Half-hearted attempt to cheer: You are not going to die, Borbala.”
Ferank breathed a sigh of relief. “Excellent news. Don’t scare an old woman like that. You had me thinking there was a real problem for a minute there. By my eyes, it’s freezing in here. You all should try the bridge. It’s hot enough to boil your spit. Turn up the heat, will you, Senna?”
“K, increase ambient temperature on Deck Nine,” Senna said impatiently. His suit regulated his own temperature, but not everyone was so lucky.
Ambient temperature on Deck 9 is already at maximum, Commander Senna’Nir. I cannot increase it without immediate damage to organic tissue.
Borbala Ferank’s teeth were starting to chatter. A thin sheen of frost gleamed at the corners of the medbay glass.
That made three, Senna thought. Three systems failing that the ship could not even tell were failing. The cryopods, the lighting, and temperature control. Something else, too, was spreading.
“Hesitant awkwardness: I am also not going to die. Nor will you, Commander, or Irit Non.” The elcor turned his kindly face toward Anax Therion.
“Ah,” the drell said. “But I am. And the hanar, perhaps.”
“How are you feeling, Analyst Therion?”
“I feel fine.”
“Genuine relief: That is good. That means there is a possibility that not all the drell pods were compromised.”
