The Abyss of Time

Chapter Twenty Seven

     "Yonel," said Miller as he pulled his surface suit back on. "I need you to move everyone in your tent to one of the others. We need it for a patient."

     "Who?" Yonel called back across the communications link. "Is it my son?"

     "I don't know," Miller replied as he zipped up the front of his suit. "We lost the link. We just know someone's infected."

     "I'm staying," Yonel told him emphatically. "If it's my son I'm staying with him."

     "So am I," Miller heard Cindy, his wife, saying in the background.

     "No," Yonel told her firmly. "You and Klaus get suited up and go to the Miller tent. I need to know you're safe."

     "And I need to know..."

     "Cindy!" Yonel was clearly in no mood for argument. "Take Klaus and go."

     "You get suited up as well," Miller told him. "We can't risk you getting infected." He knew there was no use trying to persuade him to leave, even though there was nothing he'd be able to do for the patient, whoever it was."

     "Right," the maintenance tech replied. "You others, go to the prison tent. You'll have to share with the traitor."

     There was no further communication from the quad riders. Jack had evidently decided that more messages would be too much of a risk with the cyborgs possibly still listening. They didn't find out who the patient was until the quads skidded to a halt beside the tents, therefore. One of the suited riders was slumped over the handlebars, his quad having been slaved to Jack's. The other three riders immediately ran over to him and helped him out of the saddle.

     Jack, Zanele, Felgin and Connie were already outside in their suits and they led the three riders and their patient to the Dorelis tent. Jack had to hug the unconscious man to his chest so they'd fit in the airlock together, and then they staggered through to where Yonel had inflated a bed in the middle of the tent. Yonel gave a cry of anguish when he recognised his son and repeated his name over and over as he took his helmet off. The young man's eyes were closed and he was breathing gently. To look at him, he might simply have been asleep.

     When Zanele came in she helped the two men take Jaime's suit off. Yonel gave a gasp of grief and horror when he saw the bruise, the size of a dinner plate, on his shoulder, just under the collar bone. There was something wriggling there, under the skin. Zanele opened a med kit, took out a scalpel and cut the skin open. Then she took a pair of forceps and reached into the young man's flesh with it.

     Felgin and Connie had just entered and watched as she removed a grape-sized object from which a cluster of hairline tendrils emerged at one end. She placed it in a tray and forgot about it as she returned her attention to the patient.

     "Is that it?" asked Yonel desperately. "Will he be okay now?"

     "The parasite, whatever it is, isn't the problem," said Connie, although she was studying it closely. "The problem is the bacteria that will have been introduced along with it."

     She was right, Jack saw. The bruise was growing, fast enough to be perceptible. It was already across his breast bone and was spreading up his neck, to his face. Black liquid leaked out of the incision Zanele had made.

     "Full spectrum antibiotics," she said as Felgin attached electrodes to Jaime's body. Soon, medical readouts were flashing across his tablet. Heart rate, blood pressure. A dozen other things. Zanele glanced at it as she reached into the medical supply box she'd brought in with her. She removed an ampule, read the dosage requirements on the label, loaded it into a hypospray and shot the entire contents into the young man's arm with a hiss of compressed air.