Brain Ships - Anne McCaffrey [178]
Five days later, exactly as scheduled, the PTA transport touched down to deliver new supplies and to pick up Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon for the months-long FTL journey to his new assignment. Blaize remained behind with the Loosies and his winnings: two partially depleted cases of Sapphire Ruin, Supervisor Grade 11 Harmon's hand-woven palm-frond sun hat, and the title to an abandoned corycium mine.
Deneb Subspace, Central Date 2750:
Nancia and Caleb
"That," said Caleb as he and Nancia left Deneb Spacebase, "was one of our more satisfying assignments."
"Out of a grand total of two?" Nancia teased him. But she agreed. Their first scheduled run out of Central, delivering medical supplies to a newly settled planet, had been worthwhile but hardly challenging. And they had both been apprehensive about this assignment: transporting some semi-retired general, another High Families representative, into the middle of a particularly nasty conflict between Central Worlds settlers and Capellan traders. But General Micaya Questar-Benn had proved completely different from the spoilt High Families children Nancia had taken out to Vega subspace on her first assignment. Short, competent, unassuming, the general had won Caleb's heart at once with her in-depth knowledge of Vega's complex history. She'd proceeded to spend much of the short run to Deneb subspace talking shop with Nancia; half the general's body parts and several major organs were cyborg replacements, and she was interested in the possibility of improving her liver functions with one of the newer metachip implants such as kept Nancia's physical body healthy within its shell. Nancia had never envisioned herself discussing something so personal with anybody, let alone a high-ranking army officer, but something about General Questar-Benn's unassuming manner made intimate talk unthreatening and easy.
Nancia wasn't too surprised to learn that before she and Caleb had even prepared for the return journey, General Questar-Benn had drawn human and Capellan antagonists into negotiations and worked out a settlement that would allow each side to feel they had "won."
"And here I thought we were warmongering, delivering somebody with authority to send in the heavy armored divisions!" Caleb went on.
Nancia chuckled. "The galaxy could do with a few more 'warmongers' like Micaya Questar-Benn. Ready for Singularity, partner? Central should have a new assignment for us by now."
Bahati, Central Date 2751:
Alpha
Alpha bint Hezra-Fong stared down in distaste at the writhing body of her experimental subject. What had gone wrong? The molecular variations of Blissto which she'd been preparing should have rendered the patient calm and tractable. Instead he was contorting his limbs and moaning uncontrollably, trying to break the restraint straps on his stretcher.
Alpha tightened the straps until the patient stopped thrashing and passed a medscanner over his forehead. She frowned at the results. Instead of generating soothing hormones, Blissto.Rev.2 was invading and replicating itself within the man's nervous system like a cancer gone wild.
"Damn! I haven't got time for this," she muttered. Quickly she considered her options. If she could keep the patient alive and in isolation for a few days, perhaps she would be able to find out what was causing this invasive replication and find a way to stop it. But if anybody questioned her work—
The man's convulsions increased. One leg broke the reinforced restraint strap and kicked out wildly.
"Too dangerous," Alpha decided. She pressed a hypospray to the man's neck and watched his body sag back against the stretcher. His eyes rolled upwards and the thrashing stopped.
So did all other movement.
Alpha had papers prepared for just such an emergency. The clinic director was an old fool, too lazy to check her reports; nobody else would dare to question her. Charity Patient B.342.iv would be listed as having died of heart failure brought on by a preexisting medical condition which the clinic had not had time to