Ally by Karen Traviss

Author:Karen Traviss [Karen Traviss]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780061739163
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2007-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

Umeh Station, Jejeno: Eight hours after dispersal of bioagent

“Oh God…”

It was a woman engineer who spotted it first. She was leaning against the straight section of transparent composite that formed the base section of the dome, and then she jerked upright as if something had hit her in the back.

“Oh God, what’s wrong with it?”

Eddie had been watching her for no reason other than that she was nice-looking, and that erased conscious analysis. She had a small crowd around her now. They were all looking in the direction of whatever had caught her attention. Eddie’s other animal instinct, the one that sent him running towards trouble out of sheer curiosity and fear of missing something, took his bee cam from his pocket and flicked it into the air. You never knew until you got there if something was worth filming, and by then you might have missed it. He went prepared.

“It’s sick,” said the woman. The name tag on her orange coveralls said MORANZ. Eddie peered over the cluster of heads and saw an isenj on the service road. “What’s it doing here?”

The bee cam was pressed to the composite like a nosey neighbor, and Eddie decided against slipping it outside to get a better look.

The isenj was clearly in trouble. Slumped on its side and making futile efforts to crawl towards the dome, it was losing fluid from its mouth, the same thin yellow plasma that had sprayed over him when Minister Ual was shot standing right next to him.

It was blood. The isenj was sick, all right.

“What’s it doing here? I’ve never seen them come close to the dome.”

“It’s dying,” said Eddie. Rit had been warned. Genomes didn’t follow borders and some of her own people might die when the pathogen was released.

“Can we do something?” The woman looked around her, as if there’d be a xenobiologist handy. “We can’t just leave it there. It’s trying to get help.”

The crowd was growing. Eddie thought it odd that a dying isenj would head for the dome and not its own medical facilities, but people in extremis—and isenj were people—did inexplicable things. Perhaps it already knew there was nothing an isenj medic could do for it, and hoped the fur-things in the dome might have a remedy. There were isenj going about their business just fifty meters away. Each watched the struggling creature for a moment before continuing on their way. It might have been an odd reaction to personnel in Umeh Station, who were mostly trained to react to emergencies, but Eddie had seen humans walk by the injured and dying far too many times in his life to pass judgment on another species’ unwillingness to get involved.

“I know what this is,” said Eddie. “Don’t go outside, and don’t touch it.”

“What?” said the woman. He could see she was thinking it was a health hazard to humans, and that was fine if it kept her from getting involved. “Maybe it’s been wounded.”

“It’s collateral damage,” said Eddie. “Somebody get Lieutenant Cargill and let her know, but for Chrissakes don’t go out there.

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