Chapter 15
KIT
SFS POLARIS
It’s technically dawn, though out here in the vacuum of space, it’s a meaningless concept. Outside, it’s still a deep black, the only light the trail of a meteor shower they’ve been traveling alongside for the last several hours.
Kit slides on a pair of gloves and casts a mask around her face before entering the quarantine ward in the medical bay.
The room is brightly lit by the overhead fluorescent lights, stark white except for the three beds occupied with the ambassador, Finn’s sister, and Grayson, the ambassador’s chief of staff who’d fallen ill almost immediately upon boarding.
She sighs. Another day. Her shifts feel longer here than they did in the Center, perhaps because there is no physical break. She moves from one floor to another, but she never leaves the ship — none of them do.
It’s starting to cause mild psychological symptoms in a few of the passengers. Thankfully, she has not yet had to commit anybody, but she worries that they might be getting close with at least one passenger who has been deteriorating for several days now. She didn’t expect it to happen so fast.
She puts that out of her mind for the moment. Nevis is on regular infirmary duty today, across the hall in the non-quarantined part of the bay, so the patient experiencing a possible psychiatric episode will be Nevis’ responsibility, should he finally snap.
She should have guessed that he would be here.
He’s been here almost every day since the ship left Port Ro.
She wonders how he has time for this when he’s supposed to also be the heading up security and intelligence.
Perhaps there is no real need for such an officer on a passenger ship.
She’s already asked him to stay out of the ward on several occasions, but has been met with obstinate refusal.
His face is covered with a black mask, leaving only his eyes visible to her. They are almost more piercing this way.
She nods to him. “Major Canmore.”
He nods back to her, arms crossed over his chest as he leans against the wall next to the ambassador’s bed. His surge-saber leans on the wall beside him, something he never lets out of his sight, Kit has quickly learned. “Luminary Hart.”
She tries to ignore his presence as she holds the sensor over the ambassador, tapping through the various screens.
He still sleeps, under the influence of Siloslumber, and she tries to remain quiet as she shuffles around him, looking at his vitals.
His oxygen levels are still low and he’s feverish, but at least he hasn’t worsened.
The more data that Ellsworth sends through to her from Lumaria, the more Kit isn’t sure how long he’ll last. There are few who have made it past a month, and over half the infected population has ultimately died.
She hopes she can save the ambassador, knowing what he means to Nexarium.
Kit pulls a vial out of her pocket, shaking it up. She can feel Task’s eyes tracking her every move, and it’s making her flustered, as per usual.
“What’s that?” he asks, inclining his head at the pinkish potion.
“Our latest attempt at an antidote,” Kit replies, voice soft to avoid waking the patients.
After a week of back and forth with Luminary Ellsworth, of going through the medical library and researching everything she could about similar viruses, they’ve come up with a new idea for an antidote.
It’s a take on the antivirals they were administering on Lumaria, but slightly adjusted based on the latest trials she’s run on board the Polaris.
“Latest attempt?” Task asks.
“We’ve done a few trials so far,” Kit says, gesturing towards Finn’s sister, behind a curtain opposite the ambassador.
“They failed. We’ve adjusted the component parts of the antidote, increased the selenium to opaline concentration to hopefully draw out the illness.
And added one cc of liquefied pink salt. ”
Task raises his brows. “Impressive.”
Kit snorts. “We’ll see.”
She hopes that now that they’ve added the pink salt, things will change.
She’d avoided dipping into it thus far, almost didn’t tell Task she’d added it because Oswald told her it was off-limits, but based on her latest research, she thinks increasing the ratio will help.
She’s still not sure why the virus is reacting favorably to it, but the pink salt seems to keep it at bay.
In those patients that have received a dose with pink salt, the Fever hasn’t worsened.
They remain ill, but haven’t progressed further.
They have a limited supply on board, though; a limited supply overall, given Nexarium’s strict allocations, and she has to be careful.
She’ll inevitably have to justify it to Oswald when she gets caught, which she will be.
Oswald will check the supply cabinet sooner or later, see that the pink salt has been replaced with sodium flakes, and she’ll be in trouble.
But it’s worth it. Nothing has made a real difference yet, and the pink salt’s healing properties will help.
Telling Task has a purpose — if this works and he knows that it works, he’s the Hand to the Governor. Surely he has some persuasive power over their pink salt allocations.
“I mean it,” Task says, his eyes traveling over Kit’s face, her hands, as she draws up the potion into a syringe. She feels her neck grow hot, even though she is in her element. Task throws her off-balance.
“That’s classified information, by the way,” Kit says, throwing him a look.
“I can keep a secret,” he replies. If she could see the lower half of his face, she thinks his lips would be curling into a half smile, judging by the way his eyes crinkle a bit at the corners.
Kit approaches the ambassador’s bedside, syringe in hand.
She opens the port on his IV, injecting the fluid.
She watches as it travels through the tubing, into him, and she holds her breath.
She doesn’t know why. Maybe because Task is there, maybe because she wants so badly for this to work but has such limited hope at this point.
She won’t know the results immediately. It will take at least 24 hours for the antidote to work its way through Remulus’ system, and she’ll only get a read when she scans his vitals again tomorrow.
She closes the port on his IV and walks back around to the small basin on the other side of his bed, away from Task.
She disposes of the syringe and washes her hands, then pulls up her notes on the ambassador on the screen illuminated on the wall next to her.
She taps in the time she provided the dose and sneaks a glance over her shoulder back at Task, who is still leaning on the wall.
“Don’t you have something else to do?” she asks him, throwing her gloves into the bin in the corner.
“And miss out on this quality time with you?” he retorts.
She rolls her eyes, giving voice to her earlier thoughts. “Aren’t you the chief of security? Don’t you have intelligence units to command?”
“Not presently,” he says. “My platoon is participating in a ship-side training exercise with another unit of Guardians.”
“Lucky them,” Kit says under her breath.
Task quirks a brow at her. “Already feeling claustrophobic?”
“How can you not?” she asks. “It’s the same thing day after day, the same space, the same corridors. No break. No change of scenery. No fresh air.”
Task shrugs. “Par for the course.”
“Well, it’s not for me,” Kit says, crossing her arms across her chest, defensive for reasons she doesn’t understand. “For many of the citizens aboard this ship, actually.”
Task is quiet, his eyes roaming over her. “A period of adjustment for everyone, really. It’s not as though my men are used to cohabitating with citizens of a lesser…” He pauses, as if reconsidering what he was going to say. “Citizens of another planet.”
Kit glares at him, catching his misstep. “What were you actually going to say?”
“Not important,” Task says, waving his hand. “I’ll be here with Ambassador Remulus. Get on with your day.” He dismisses her, even though she was the one that was finished with her work.
Kit turns her back to him, a sinking feeling in her stomach that he was going to say something about being trapped with citizens he feels to be less than. The prick.
She’s noticed that he rarely deigns to talk to anyone on the ship aside from his little trio of men, and has made comments on several occasions about other planets being irrelevant.
Although she’s never met someone from Nexarium before, she’s heard gossip about them in Aventia, and she understands their society is organized around the strength of their powers.
Beyond its brute military strength and its pink salt monopoly, the reason Nexarium serves as the ruling planet is because of its people — the most powerful in the galaxy.
Task is very obviously one of them, which begs the question: why does he bother entertaining himself with her at all?
She feels a burning in her chest, anger building inside of her as she thinks about Task, what he represents.
He is arrogant and entitled and annoying her, the way he won’t stop drumming his fingers against the metal wall behind him.
She takes a calming breath, trying to steady herself before she moves to tend to Finn’s sister, Pruett, and Grayson.
The rage dissipates some, though her skin still feels hot.
She needs to administer the newest version of the antidote to both, which she prefers to do while they sleep. But she sees that Pruett is already awake. A momentary rush of nerves swoops through her, hoping Pruett didn’t just hear her conversation with Task.
Pruett’s wavy brown hair is splayed on the pillow behind her, skin still sallow and face pale. Her freckles are almost invisible on her cheeks and the bags under her eyes are blue. A dark purple rash crawls up from her collarbones like ivy.