“Sort of have to agree with Trixie, ma’am,” Januscheitis said.
“Wizard, Shewolf,” Faith radioed. “This position was clear six months ago, over.”
“Concur,” Captain Wilkes replied. “Position clear. Survey and Salvage team, begin ops.”
“I’m an electrician, not a radiological specialist, ma’am…”
PO3 Jared Osburn had spent most of his time since exiting the USS Dallas fixing the myriad electrical problems of the squadron. But this was the first time that he’d even seen the power set-up for a cesium X-ray machine. And he knew diddly about what it was actually putting out.
“We’re getting the right output readings, ma’am,” PO1 Shawn Hougo said. The “nuke” machinist mate did know diddly about radiological systems. Quite a bit more than “diddly” in fact. What might be tough for a radiological technician was basically day one of Nuke School. “It appears to be fully operational. This ward was not significantly affected by the results of the Plague.”
“The rest of the hospital sure was,” Faith said, shaking her head. “Can you pick it up and move it?”
“Carefully,” Hougo said. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll have to do it the same way that they got it in here: Take out a wall.”
“Be better if the hallways were clear, ma’am,” Osburn pointed out. “We’re going to have to take it out on a dolly. Really have to have the hallways clear.”
“And we can’t wait for Daddy’s Little Helpers to do their trick,” Faith said with a grimace. “Okay, we’ll call it in. X-ray machine works. Probably should be pulled out. And we gotta clear the halls.”
“Ma’am?” Januscheitis said. “They need the techs upstairs. They found a centrifuge.”
“Oooo,” Sophia said, her arms wrapped around the centrifuge. “Nice…”
“You’re weird, Sis,” Faith said, looking at the device. It just looked like a waist-high white box.
“Six-liter capacity,” Sophia said. “One hundred thousand rpm. This one is better than…Anything I’ve ever used.”
“So we’re good?” Faith asked.
“As soon as we find out if it works,” Sophia said. “Ozman! Need power…!”
“How many air maintenance personnel do we have?” Steve asked, looking around the hangar. For once the helos—two CH-53s, three Coastguard Seahawk variants and a CH-46—were not riddled with holes or left out in the elements for months. They’d finally pitched the Lynx off the back of the Social Alpha to reduce weight. “Can we get at least one of these running?”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Bryan Szafranski said. The Coastguardsman was the sole surviving airframe maintenance officer on the base they’d found. “None of my people…made it…”
“I’m sorry for your loss never covers it,” Steve said. “But…?”
“There are several airframe mechanics among the surviving Marines, mostly from the Iwo Jima,” Szafranski said. “I don’t have specific service records but they should have some familiarity with the CH-46 at the least and probably the Seahawks. And the birds are in good condition given the time they’ve been sitting. They’ll need a thorough inspection, though, before I can certify them to fly.”
“Understood,” Steve said. “Parts?”
“Sufficient for now, sir,” Szafranski said. “If you’re intending extended operations, we’ll need more.”
“Eventually, then, yes, we will,” Steve said with a note of satisfaction. “Now if we can just make vaccine…”
“Nope,” Sophia said, shaking her head as she entered her father’s office. “Or, rather, sir, there are insufficient consumables, notably separation gel, to make any significant quantity of vaccine. And by ‘any significant quantity’ I mean so much as ten units of booster or primer. There’s maybe a cup left.”
“Damnit,” Steve said as the rest of the hospital survey leadership filed in.
“We’ve got everything else,” Sophia said, slumping into a chair without asking. “And we turned the hospital upside down looking for more. But it’s a hospital, not a research center. There probably wasn’t much there to start with. It’s not used in treatment at all. There’s some indication that some was used. The one box we found was open and mostly empty. Maybe someone in the hospital was making vaccine on the side. But that appears to be it in inventory and that’s gone.”
“What about the rest?” Steve asked.
“For making vaccine?” Captain Wilkes asked.
“Vaccine first,” Steve said.
“Functional X-ray machine, functional, excellent even, centrifuge,” Sophia said, looking at her list. “General lab equipment, although not as much as I’d like. Bunch of glassware got trashed. Syringes and pipettes. Not as much of those as I’d like but you can make work-arounds. Basically everything we need except gel. And, Captain, Da? The more I think about it, the more I realize what a problem we’re going to have with that.”
“Short explanation?”
“She covered it on the ride back, sir,” Walker said. “The gel is basically the same gel you use in DNA photophoresis, if you’re more familiar with that.”
“Pretend I’m not,” Steve said, grinning mirthlessly.
“Okay,” Walker said. “It’s a gel that allows molecules to slip through. The smaller molecules slip through faster, the larger slower. Make sense?”
“Yes,” Steve said.
“After you separate the virus bodies you want just certain proteins,” Walker said. “Which are a certain size and thus pass through the gel at a certain rate. To make the vaccine you have to dump the centrifuged material into the gel and then wait a specified time.”
“Which is effing tedious,” Sophia said. “You remember when we’d get bored on the boat and I’d say ‘Better than waiting on a gel’?”
“That’s what you were talking about,” Steve said, nodding.
“You have to have this stuff to make the vaccine, Da,” Sophia said, sighing. “Sorry, sir…”
“Not the big issue,” Steve said. “So where do we get it?”
“That’s the problem,” Sophia said. “We…the powers that be? They weren’t making infected into vaccine as a regular program, you know? But there were a lot of people who were doing it. By the time we finished with…the Program, finding gel was nearly impossible. Everybody was out. And even Dr. Curry said making it was pretty much out of the question. I mean, could somebody make it? Sure. Dr. Dobson may know how. But I guarantee it takes stuff we don’t have. One kind is made from some kind of algae. We need more. And we’re going to need a lot, at least two hundred pounds or so, to make enough vaccine for all the sub crews. And it was already in short supply at the Fall. I’m not sure we’re screwed but…I think we’re screwed.”
“Table that for now,” Steve said. “General supplies.”
“Essentially it comes down to anything nonconsumable, plenty, sir,” Walker said. “There was even plenty of OB materials. At least, plenty in any normal situation. Anything consumable except Viagra was shot. Antibiotics, antivirals, disinfectants, pain medications, all the pharmaceuticals, were if not used up, then essentially used up. There wasn’t even a single full bottle of Betadyne in the whole place. The exception is things like anesthetics used in surgery. That we’ve got. Morphine and codeine, not so much. I think they were either stealing the opiates at the end or using them to tranq the infected.”
“So,” Steve said, looking out the window. There was a sub surfaced in the distance. The Boise had suffered a critical failure in their air handling system and was out of action for the foreseeable future. They were keeping well away from any wind-blown source of infection but they had to open up their hatches. “We have to find a source of consumable materials. I’ll toss that to Dobson. Captain Wilkes.”