Project Charon 2 by Patty Jansen (brene brown rising strong .TXT) 📗

“It may be, but it’s not an infection that is passed from one person to the other easily. You have to have serious contact with whatever it is that causes the infection. I have a friend who you’ll meet later who’s a scientist. He can tell you more about it.”

So it was an infection that the pirates under Artan were deliberately spreading. And she and Rex had value, because despite having had exposure to it, they were resistant. They were important, not as a defence against the infection, but as a weapon against the pirates. And the pirates wanted her and Rex because they wanted to keep anyone from having that power over them.

That was the theory, at least. Finn was right: a lot of people wanted to profit from her genetics and her information.

She was tired, and was about to propose that she and Rex turn in early so that they could start on their plans tomorrow, but then there was a knock on the door. Jens went to open it.

Three people came in, two women and a tall man with greying hair and a short beard.

Tina recognised him immediately. She gasped. “Vasily.”

He frowned, his expression blank. “Have we met before?”

She studied his face, and noticed slight differences from the man she thought she recognised who had sent her a message before he said he’d die.

“Sorry, I thought you were someone else. You look a lot like someone I haven’t seen for a long time.”

“Vasily Dimitrov.”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“I did. He’s missing, presumed dead. He was my twin brother.” He held out his hand. “I’m Arkady.”

Tina shook it. “Tina Freeman.”

“I figured as much.”

“I got your brother’s message,” Tina said. “Eventually, even if I got it fifteen years late.”

Chapter Nineteen

Arkady introduced the two women who were with him as prominent ex-scientists for the Federacy, both from Olympus. They’d been travelling when they became stuck on Aurora because of pirate action. Jetta Bengtson was a physicist in middle age with a severe bun of greying blond hair. Yalinda Singh was younger and had worked in the medical labs.

Tina had heard of Jetta, but didn’t know Yalinda. Both women already knew who Tina was, from Arkady’s stories.

Jetta explained to Tina that the group associated with Thor consisted of scientists and technicians. “We’ve all gotten together because we realise we can’t beat this thing alone. It’s been hard enough to retrieve available data from the remnants of Project Charon. Some of it was highly classified. These are the conclusions we’ve drawn from materials we’ve obtained: there are two reactions from people to the rift infection. The first is the route taken by the Federacy: if no one is allowed to mention it, write papers on it and share it with other scientists, they assume that the material will dissipate into space and no one will ever encounter it in high enough concentrations to do any harm. Never mind we still don’t know what triggers an infection. The other type of people see the unlimited genetic potential of this material, and they want to use the material, and make money from selling it. We already see rumours spreading through the settled worlds that an infection will make you invincible and will make you live longer.”

“Is that not true, then?” Tina asked. Thor had said so.

“From what we’ve seen, it may be true, but it comes at a very high cost.”

“That you look like a toad.”

“That people who are infected change because the infection spreads to their organs. It changes the way people behave. It turns them into something else, no longer human. We can’t allow this to spread, especially when it’s being touted as a cure for major diseases and people are making money from it. But if we speak out, our jobs will be terminated, like yours.”

“So, you’re a kind of resistance?”

“If you want to call it that. We try to be very quiet about it, though. It’s dangerous to speak out.”

They sat down around the table, and Thor busied himself making more tea.

The women told their stories, of how, after their travel to Olympus was no longer possible, they’d been part of the station’s staff and had managed to escape the fate that had befallen so many of them.

Jetta had been sick on the day the pirates occupied the station, but all her colleagues were missing. Yalinda had worked for a private lab that hadn’t been affected because it was a private business in a different part of the station, but a few days after the pirates invaded, they raided the lab, smashed all the equipment and made sure that no one had the resources to return to work.

“We’ve been struggling to make ends meet,” she said. “My parents relied on my income, and my father has had to go back to work. It’s a disgrace that he has to work for the pirates.”

Tina felt tired, and hoped she was listening properly to everything they said. This was too important to allow herself to doze off.

She said to Arkady, “Do you know what happened to your brother?”

“If you received his message, you’re probably the last person to have heard from him.”

“There was some information in his letter, but not much about where he was and what had happened. He said he might be dead, but it’s been sitting in the document box for such a long time that I have no idea what happened since.”

“We last had contact with him at about the same time. We only received a vague farewell letter. He said he didn’t want to say where he was for fear of exposing people who were with him who might still be able to escape to safety. We’ve done some work, and have revealed that he was somewhere near Project Charon when he sent the message. We think he was either already captured or soon to be captured by pirates.”

“Did you work for the Federacy as well?” Tina asked.

“No. My