Empire's Legacy

Chapter 8: Contagious Research

"Holy shit," Amy said, pushing back from her workstation in the diseases lab. Ramina looked up. "The people on this ship were killed by Warnao fever."

Ramina raised her eyebrows. "I'm not familiar with it."

"It's a viral hemorrhagic fever. Really nasty." Amy shook her head. "I thought I recognized the symptoms. It was eradicated over two hundred years ago."

"I wasn't aware that you specialized in historical diseases."

"I don't." She lifted her hand to rub her head and whacked herself in the visor. "I mean, I couldn't tell you which family or order or whatever the virus is part of. The only reason I recognize it is because it was a huge pain in the ass for the Empire for about fifty years, out in the rural areas where hygienic practices weren't ideal and there wasn't much in the way of trained medical staff or hospitals. It spread like hell."

A frown creased Ramina's brow. "I'm not familiar with Warnao fever specifically, but my understanding of viral hemorrhagic fevers is that, in general, they transmit though bodily fluids. Saliva, blood, semen—" Seeing Amy's face, she cut herself off, paused, and then continued, "The problem is that while the Waratah presumably uses a water purification system to filter out contaminates, the primary danger on a ship like this would not be the water system, as it would in a rural environment, but rather general contact in which fluids are potentially exchanged. Particles exchanged during conversation could be sufficient for transmission and infection, with the possibility of surface transmission as well, depending on the rate of survival outside of the body. Unless the Empire automatically sterilizes the air and all surfaces with which biological matter comes into contact?"

Amy shook her head. "The Waratah is a tremendously advanced ship by Commission standards, like all Empire-era ships. But to the best of my knowledge...no. They didn't have that kind of sterilization tech."

"Monaco worked in this lab," Ramina said, folding her arms across her chest, a pensive look on her face. "Are we working on the supposition that he unintentionally released the disease on which he was working?"

"I can't imagine he intentionally released it," Amy pointed out. "I guess a terrorist might intentionally infect themselves, but—hell, I don't think even the most fervent belief would convince me to sacrifice myself on the altar of Warnao fever."

"Assuming he did so by accident," Ramina said, "would he have realized?" She hesitated and then added, "My own lab work suggests that he must have done, but then people are often careless when it's most important."

"The incubation period for Warnao can be as long as a month," Amy said, mind whirring. "It can be as short as three days, but it's certainly possible that Monaco didn't realise at the time that he'd infected himself. He might have cleaned up as usual and moved on to another experiment. Even if someone had gone to look into what he'd been doing, his notes in the days around the time he checked himself into medical might not have reflected what he'd been working on when he was infected, and might not have helped." She paused and then added, "Although you'd think that at some point in the ten days it took him to die he'd have thought to mention which disease he'd likely managed to kill himself with."

Ramina shook her head. "You're being too rational, when disease is anything but. By the second day, Monaco couldn't talk, and he was too weak to write. And his initial symptoms mimicked the flu."

"Ugh." Amy dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling. "Okay, different tactic. This is a research ship. Have you run across anything that suggests they might have kept a vaccine or antiviral? It was an inactive, eradicated disease at the time, so theoretically there ought to be one or the other in existence."