Antibodies 8

Characters.
Nana Bev, Interplanetary prospector.
Jamie, Bev’s younger prospecting Partner.
Dennis Potter Freight manager and old friend of Beverly’s.
Jack Godfrey Yard foreman and walking boss.
Charlotte and Lucy - Jamie’s younger dancing & clubbing friends.
Rose and Violet. Cis-girl friends of Jamie.
Dr Williams Virologist
Jennifer Jamie’s girlfriend. (Sleeping partner.)

Chapter 8

Naturally, the Captain in command of the transferral operation wanted to try a couple of ‘Dummy runs’ so the first day was pretty much a waste of time, We only managed to transfer one container of volunteers and that was a pretty scary event.

To avoid the volunteers being battered and bruised, the ‘spacewalkers’ discovered they had to tether the bumping containers to our patrol craft and that added half an hour to each cycle. What the poor buggers inside the containers must have wondered is anybody’s guess.

It was also something of a revelation to discover that for micro manoeuvring our faithful old Digger was much more effective than a high-speed patrol craft. The trouble was, Digger was hidden beyond Saturn.

I’m afraid the generously supplied patrol craft received more than its fair share of dents and scrapes.

ooo000ooo

Nevertheless, the operation did progress satisfactorily. Then, when two of the ships were full of radiated volunteers; a quick calculation showed that it would save on supplies and stores if those two ships set off back to Earth without an escort. The outward journey had proven to be incident free and it was reasoned that there seemed to be little cause for concern on the return journey.

The remaining supplies were re-distributed between the supply ships and the first group set off back to Earth.

From our patrol craft, Jamie and I watched the ships gradually disappearing then we returned to our ferrying duties.

The transfers to the third UN ship proved to be a little bumpy but eventually the ship was filled and the expedition captain decided to send the ship back to Earth unescorted while we finished off the last transfers. It was only when we were busy ferrying the transfers to the fourth ship that the news came through that the first two ships had been attacked and Hijacked.

Jamie was busy on the radio talking to the last ship when the space net exploded into pandemonium. Well experienced as she was, she ripped me from my slumbers.

“Be-ev! Nana! We’ve got trouble!

“What!?” I yelled back anticipating some sort of leak or damaged container as I stumbled from my cot.”

“There’s some sort of trouble near Earth. Piracy or something, I’m earwigging the captain of the escort.”

“Where is the escort?” I asked as I searched for a visual.

Jamie flipped the sensor screen to reveal the Escort craft hightailing it after the third vessel and thus rapidly abandoning us to any attack that might appear.

“What do we do?” Jamie asked.

I quickly spoke with the other captains of the passenger ship and the supply craft and we quickly concluded that the best thing to do was to finish the irradiations then scarper. I listened to the other senior remaining captain as he outlined a plan.

“We get all the remaining volunteers irradiated ASAP then we leave this place with the supply ships and find somewhere to hide until the authorities clear up the mess.”

“Okay, I agreed. It was no use arguing! His plan was as good as any we could dream up. The all-important thing was to finish the irradiations and get the volunteers to a safe place.

The captain elaborated his plan.

“We get everybody to Saturn and possibly lurk around Titan.”

I had severe reservations about this plan because the logistics didn’t hold up.

It might be okay to ship a thousand people out to Titan just to hide them; but keeping them there until an unknown situation on Earth had resolved itself did not strike me as ‘a plan’!

“How are you going to feed them?” I asked. “They could be cooped up on the ship for months.”

“The supply ship could reload another cargo of supplies.”

“From where? The hydroponic farms on Mars are only designed to feed the townships on Mars. Suddenly dumping a thousand extra mouths to feed is not going to endear you to the Marsfolk. Their logistics are pretty perilous as we speak.” I cautioned.

He fell thoughtfully silent the frowned.
“What about the hydroponic moons of Venus?”

“The hydroponic moons of Venus were an endeavour by man to terraform the planet Venus. Essentially they were artificial moons mostly comprising rocks dragged from the asteroid belt between mars and Jupiter then conjoined together and encased in glass to make gigantic airtight spherical greenhouses.

On these moons, scientists, agriculturalists, and biologists were experimenting to create mutated plants in Laboratory conditions. These plants were being mutated and tested inside the hydroponic tanks to create plants to inspirate much higher concentrations of carbon dioxide then aspirate oxygen out through the leaves while developing root systems that broke down sulphuric acid rain into water, sulphur and Oxygen to be either disposed of into the sun or somehow utilised to terraform Venus.

Some of these artificial moons were several thousand metres in diameter and they now orbited Venus in a stable bracelet of glittering spheres of glass.

Despite the considerable effort and endeavour, the artificial hydroponic moons of Venus would in no way provide food fit for humans.

The system had taken decades to develop and was only now beginning to show the faintest glimmer of prospects.

The agriculturalists who were running the Venusian show, grew plenty of vegetables for their own consumption in one dedicated hydroponic moon with earth-like conditions, but they would never feed a thousand extra mouths.

The captain’s suggestion was a non-starter. The more we examined the equation the more it seemed we had to determine the exact situation on earth then decide a plan, if a plan was viable.

During these intense discussions Jamie came to me with her own ideas.

“Look Nana, we are still unknown to these people. They have never seen our faces because we are always wearing our spacesuits when manoeuvring our ship close to others and we use the voice distortion all the time. I’ve got an idea.”

ooo000ooo

I was open to any suggestions and I nodded encouragement.

“Go babes, hit me with it.”

She looked at me and frowned uncertainly with reflected her lack of self-confidence despite having been a successful space-mate for upwards of five years.

“Go on Babes, spit it out.”

“Well, we should separate from these ships and return to Digger. As far as anybody knows, Digger is somewhere deep in space beyond Saturn perhaps, exploring Uranus or Neptune’s moons. If Digger just turns up back from deep space, everybody will think we are just returning from one of your prospecting trips for which you are well known amongst the space community.”

“Go on.” I encouraged.

“We could at least get close to Earth and find out what the situation is.

Have the kidnappers taken the irradiated volunteers to some place on Earth and holding them to ransom or have they somehow overwhelmed the whole planet. It’s no good trusting transmissions from Earth because we don’t know who’s in control of what.”

I had to inwardly smile. In the brief five years I had known her, Jamie had grown an old head on young shoulders. She certainly knew the dangers associated with space and dealt with them in a mature responsible manner.
It was a damming reflection of how her transgenderism had been abused by societal mores to gnaw away at her self-confidence; despite her having superb space-man capability.

“Well,” I nodded thoughtfully, “you’re making sense girl. Do we hide this patrol craft somewhere beyond Neptune. If we do, we’ll have to split temporarily one of us to each of the ships then meet up outside Neptune’s orbit then park this patrol ship out there while we travel all innocent and incognito, back to Earth.”

“Sooner rather than later,” Jamie agreed.

We chose to do it immediately and peeled away from the little convoy before the others could react. It was painful ignoring their demands as they slowly turned to requests then beseechments as we sped away at speed to our secret location where Digger was parked up.

“I feel guilty not explaining.” Jamie observed quietly.

“So do I Babe’s but needs must. We have no idea if there are spies on those ships or if they might consider us as traitors or enemies or what. Our behaviour must appear totally criminal to them. We have to remain anonymous until there are sufficient numbers of donors to spread immunity.”

“And we won’t know that until we get back to Earth.” Jamie reflected.

“Exactly,” I nodded, “and we can’t trust any sub-space communications.”

Jamie pulled a wry smirk as we sped at maximum speed towards Digger.

ooo000ooo

“These things are fast!” Jamie turned to me as she scanned our plot.

“They’re supposed to be. My great grandfather was the inventor of this drive and they haven’t much improved on it.”

“What your great grandfather was Charlie Sage?”

“Yeah. The Gravity drive inventor.

“Oh my God! Is that where the Sage comes from, the sub-atomic unit of gravitational extrapolation comes from.”

“Yeah. The very same.”

“Did you ever meet him?”

“There’s a family photograph of him holding me in his arms as a new-born infant. He died very soon after that, old age and stuff.”

“Do you keep in touch with the family?”

“Only my mother, and even that’s a pretty tenuous connection.”

“I’d have thought after his battles with the feminista forces, your transgenderism would be ‘old hat’.” Jamie wondered.

“More like ‘old shoe’ but a pretty worn out scuffed one. The family don’t abuse me or condemn me for being ‘trans’ but I know my mother want’s grandchildren and her disappointment sometimes shows through the cracks.”

“Why don’t you go the donor route? I take it you’ve got frozen sperm.”

“First find an agreeable egg.” I mused as I cross referenced the navigation plot.”

“I’d have a womb transplant just for you.” Jamie replied suggestively.

“What about eggs?” I replied.

“There’s millions of women out there prepared to donate their eggs, especially if it means they can become a mother without having to give up work. You know what it’s like?”

“We all knew the maths surrounding the universal birth control rules as the Earth became over-populated. Only two babies per woman so that the population would slowly reduce without putting too much strain on the societal fabric. Single sex couples could rightfully have up to two children and lots of hetero-couples were prepared to buy the extra baby-right off a same-sex couple without technically adding to the population density but simultaneously allowing the hetero-couple to enjoy three or even four children.

There were many single sex couples more than prepared to sell their baby quota to heterosexual couples and all the authorities were concerned about was the parental resources available to the hetero couple to raise and extra children.

We chatted about the population situation until we knew we were in Digger’s location then Jamie activated the low-powered search scanner to cause Digger’s ID beacon to respond. The response was immediate which was a reflection on our navigation accuracy because we had left Digger on an elongated orbit around Titan.

“Bingo!” Jamie squeaked with deserved satisfaction. “Right on the button Nana.”

“Okay Babe’s. Space suit on and haul yourself across. We can each pilot a ship ‘til we get close to Earth then we can place this patrol craft in a suitable orbit and the navy can collect her while we skedaddle to anonymity.”

“With our plan prepared we completed the return of the patrol craft to the navy while Jamie and I slipped away to Saturn’s moon Titan and recovered some geological samples that would create the impression that we had been way out in space during the whole story surrounding the vaccine donators.
When we finally returned to Earth proper we played the simple act of pretending to be geology prospectors just trying to make a buck locating minerals and stuff.

Naturally, when Digger and her two crew finally landed at Dennis’s depot we simply fell into the conversation that was occupying everybody’s mind. The pirated United Nations ships with the kidnapped vaccine donors.

“So how many ships got pirated Dennis?” I asked feigning complete ignorance.

“Three out of the four. The pirates had a fleet of warships and they overwhelmed the convoy. The single escort ship was escorting the last ship and that’s the only ship that arrived home safely.

The first three ships were pirated to a base in Sub-Saharan Africa.

“So they know where they are then?” Jamie observed.

“Yes but they’re being held hostage by this religious cult. An extremist off-shoot of the old jihadist movement.”

“I thought the islamist extremists were all sorted during the last and final caliphate war. They more or less wiped each other out didn’t they?”

“Apparently not. There’s a residue extremist faction still active in the North Congo Basin.”

“What about those first ‘home-grown’ volunteers who were treated first?”
Jamie asked.

“They’re okay apparently but. That’s only a few hundred and they are still working on producing a vaccine. For now, they can only do what those first two donors did and offer half a litre of blood every six weeks.”

“That’s ten cc of blood per dose so that’s fifty doses every six weeks from each donor. Those are the figures the researchers are saying at the moment. Until the vaccines are available it’s just a drop in the ocean.”

Dennis explained.

“So our five hundred home-grown volunteers can only produce about twenty-five thousand doses every six weeks.” Jamie calculated. “That’s not going to cut it!”

After weighing in our rock samples, Jamie and I left for our apartment in the city. I wanted to sleep but Jamie wanted to go clubbing. She telephoned Jennifer and the last thing I heard before going to sleep, was Jennifer’s voice at the door.

ooo000ooo