IC - 19 - Barnard's Rest - Kiara

[Mephistophilis]

Day 2
12th March 2189
13:10 Earth Central European Time
Barnard's Rest Colony, Titan

Kiara and Li leave the Landing Bay for the deserted Transport Hub. As they turn into the eerily quiet corridor leading towards the Medical Clinic there's a quiet but high pitched whine. Li looks at something on her wrist and then swears, 'Shit, someone's trying to access the shuttle.'

[jp1885]

Kiara’s face drops. “Crap; that’s my- our ticket out of here. Y’know, we might need it to get everyone off-world I mean. C’mon, let’s see who it is.”

[Mephistophilis]

You going over to the Shuttle Bay? It is some distance from the Transport Hub and the rest of the colony.

[jp1885]

Oh, forgot about that!

“Actually, we might not have time to go all the way there. Least we can do is patch into the monitoring system and see who it is.”

[Mephistophilis]

Kiara connects her datapad to the colony network and accesses the security cameras in the Shuttle Bay. The cameras are set quite far back from the shuttle so it is difficult to make out details but it looks like there is a great crowd of people collecting around the shuttle. Some of them seem to have climbed onto the shuttle's aerofoils. At the head of them, standing on one of the wings, is a man in some kind of robe. He seems to be riling up the crowd although it is not possible to make out what he is saying through the microphones which are only picking up the sound of many voices raised in shouts and anger. The figure looks familiar, heavyset, receding red hair, scraggly beard, it's Administrator Kingsley.

Li laughs, 'Don't worry. They're not getting inside without my say so. Company wouldn't leave an expensive piece of kit like that unsecured.' She presses something else on her wrist and in the camera feed Kiara can see one of the people trying the shuttle door clutching his hand in pain and falling to the ground. 'Non-lethal electric shock' says Li. As she continues to watch, Kiara sees more people clamber over the fallen man and start attacking the door again, he doesn't resurface.

[jp1885]

“Any way we can connect to the shuttle remotely? I don’t want to fight my way through everyone if we need it in a hurry,” Kiara asks, watching the scrambling throng.

“Either way, let’s get to sickbay before the others radio in.”

[Mephistophilis]

Li shakes her head, 'You can fly the shuttle on autopilot but you'd still have to get on board first. And we'd need someone in the Shuttle Bay Control Room to open the dome.'

-----

Arriving at the Medical Clinic the door is locked shut. After a minute of hammering Nurse Richards reluctantly slides the door half open and hurries them inside. He returns to stuffing various medical supplies into a large holdall bag. Around his waist there are several surgical blades and syringes tied on with bandages. 'Didn't you hear the transmission? You need to get somewhere safe. Whole colony is falling apart, CENTRAL's stopped working, everyone's abandoned their posts, Kingsley's organised some great religious meeting in the Interfaith Chapel. I'm getting out of here.'

[jp1885]

“We just saw Kingsley on a monitor, leading a mob and trying to get into our shuttles,” Kiara replies grimly. “Which is a problem if you want to escape.”

“Let me collect some samples of infected material and we can work something out.”

Taking a deep breath, she looks from Richards to Li.

“There are people driving to pumping station six in an effort to fix this. We’ve got a chopper: we can fly out to them, or use it to disperse the crowd and get the hell out of here on the shuttle. Either way, there’s no safe haven on this station.”

[Mephistophilis]

Richards opens the sample drawers and Kiara is able to grab as many as she wants. Richards shrugs, 'Keep those samples safe. Sounds like the infection has spread in the colony. I was gonna wait for the evacuation shuttle. I'm not taking on Kingsley and those religious nutters. Besides, the message from Richter Dynamics said to hold tight and not try to leave.'

Ling looks uncomfortable, 'I don't think we can disperse that crowd with the copter, it won't get in through the Shuttle Bay dome for a start.' Then she whispers to Kiara, 'There's also only two seats.'

[jp1885]

Kiara pauses for a moment, before coming to a decision.

“Screw it, I can’t bail now…”

She lines up a few samples for testing.

“Let me scan these samples and try to work out how to kill the infectious cells - Nurse Richards you can help if you like. Li, please can you watch the door, just in case?”

[Mephistophilis]

Is Kiara trying lots of different chemicals and so on to see what effect it has on the infected cells? Or did you have something else in mind?

[jp1885]

I guess the first step if you properly scan to find out what the stuff is made of (if that’s possible) and work out what to treat it with from there, be it chemicals, radiation, sonic beams or whatever.

[Mephistophilis]

Kiara accesses Jojo's memory dump to see what he has found out so far. This gives her some ideas about how to go about investigating the cellular samples from Montrose, even though she's far from being medically trained. Macroscopically they're unremarkable but at higher magnification they look very odd indeed. Some, labelled as skin and subcutaneous tissue, remind her of grasses she studied in biology classes, where silica phytoliths are deposited within the cell body, making it tough and inflexible. Other cells, labelled as internal and subcutaneous tissues, are reminiscent of algal diatoms, where the cell wall itself is made of silica. Jojo indicates he thinks this explains some odd artefacts he found when imaging the body, dense inorganic material in the tissue interfering with the x-ray and magnetic resonance.

Jojo also noticed that the grass-like cells were photosensitive and Kiara confirms this. They extrude inorganic material when exposed to high intensity visible and ultraviolet electromagnetic spectrums. Jojo notes that this extruded inorganic material looks very much like the green powdery substance with a slightly filamentous surface they found on the body. It does, however, differ from the scaly material in the subcutaneous tissue which seems to be more due to the diatom-like silica-walled cells.

Jojo also compared Montrose's DNA to that he extracted from the cells and found no evidence of abnormal sequences or methylation. His conclusion was that this is an extraterrestrial pathogen with a biology that is not purely carbon-based.

Unless you have any ideas about what you'd like to test on the cells I'm going to need a Luck roll and a Science-Biology or Medicine roll to see what Kiara can figure out.

[jp1885]

[43] = 43
Luck 60 d%:  [ 43 ] = 43

[25] = 25
Science biology 20 d%:  [ 25 ] = 25

Ok, gonna spend 5 luck (thankfully I still make the luck roll!)

Kiara beavers away. The work is difficult: despite coming from a so-called ‘genius’ family, biology is not her field.

She is about to throw in the towel, when inspiration strikes…

[Mephistophilis]

Initially Kiara follows the obvious path of bombarding the cells with various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation. The ultraviolet spectrum in particular seems to cause the cells to extrude the filamentous material and eventually rupture but it doesn't affect the diatom-like deeper cell samples.

Infrared radiation has no deleterious effect, in fact, if anything, it potentiates the activity of the cells, combining it with the ultraviolet and the grass-like cells extrude and rupture even more rapidly. Focusing the infrared on the diatomous cells doesn't cause them to rupture, instead it accelerates their transformation from normal eukaryotes into the alien silica walled cells.

Following this line of thought she tries lowering the temperature and finds that the transformed cells are highly resistant to low temperatures with none of the cell wall damage usually seen when cytoplasm freezes. But she also notes that at very low temperatures the cellular transformations completely stop and when she bombards the grass-like cells with UV nothing happens. It looks like freezing temperatures arrest the alien pathogen, but don't destroy it.

[jp1885]

I’ll pretend I understood all of that Basically, very cold temperatures stops the change but there’s no way to reverse it?

[Mephistophilis]

Basically sunlight/UV (of which there is precious little on Titan) seems to accelerate the green growth and ultimately destroy some of the infected cells. Heat (of which there is also little on Titan) speeds this up but also accelerates the spread of the infection. Cold slows down or even stops the infection or any of the other 'alien' biological processes like the green growth. What any of that means when confronted with an infected individual is anyone's guess.

[jp1885]

Lol thanks. I’m a bear of very little brain.

Kiara tries to outline what she’s discovered in layman’s terms to the other two.

“I don’t know how it helps us though… perhaps someone else will…”

Muttering to herself, she prepares to transmit the data on all frequencies. Hopefully the crew of the rover, and anyone else who happens to be listening, will find the data useful.

[Mephistophilis]

'Thanks, that will prove helpful,' replies Sam over the radio. 'Looks like we're dealing with a silicon-based lifeform. We just ran across someone out on the surface in a suit - almost literally, but we stopped just in time. We're about to take a closer look.'

[jp1885]

“Be careful; if it’s someone infected… we’ll, I don’t need to tell you what might happen,” Kiara radios back, relieved that Sam and co. are alright.

“Please keep me updated; I need to know when we can take off so we arrive just before you guys. In the meantime I’ll see what I can do with this data. Kiara out.”

She turns once again to her pad, explaining her actions to Li and Richards as she taps away.

“I’m checking the station’s stores manifest for emergency flares or suchlike. If I can combine them with some kind of UV source, perhaps I could build something that produces an intense blast of heat and UV. Hmm, Nurse Richards, do you have a tanning booth or something you use to treat skin conditions?”