Fic: (NaNo) The Citadel - chapter 6
title: The Citadel - chapter 6
rating: NC-17, PG-13 for this part
summary: Sci-Fi AU: Several decades in the future, Dominic, Billy, and the rest of the guys work and live on an orbiting space station, which gets infected and taken over by an alien force. The boys have to fight the evil stuff and save the day. :)
wordcount total: 30,128 (yay, I made it to 30k!)
wordcount for this chapter: 4,157
index
Three hours later, nearly all Citadel employees were either on searching duty or reporting back to Dominic with updated measurements of the organisms already found. Dominic diligently entered in the new numbers, all the while trying not to look back at the blueprint overview. The evolving graphic was becoming more and more frightening as time went on.
Billy had gone out to assist Elijah and had been both reporting back to Dominic and encouraging him with kind words and optimism. Dominic was having trouble putting any stock in Billy’s predictions, however, because instances of KD-142 were popping up all over the grid.
Most of the newer growths were very small and were staying that way, at least for the moment, but the larger ones, especially the original mass in sector K were growing at a phenomenal rate.
Once Dominic had received enough data, he started a spreadsheet, which listed each isolated growth, and its size per hour. As the numbers continued to flood in, he felt a twinge of recognition, but he couldn’t place the pattern. His PDA, on speakerphone, beeped again and he answered it by haphazardly punching at the screen.
“Dom, it’s Elijah. I’m calling a meeting of all the department heads and I want you there. Other people as well, but mainly the leaders.”
“Alright, where?” Dominic replied distractedly, still staring at the list of numbers on his screen.
“Conference Room G. It’s one of the largest, I think.”
“Great, I’ll be there.”
“Okay. Half an hour.”
“See you then,” Dominic muttered, but Elijah had already disconnected. Several minutes later, Billy quietly entered the room. “Hey,” Dominic said without turning his head.
“Hi. I didn’t want to interrupt…”
“It’s alright, I’m just… I can’t place this pattern.”
Billy looked over his shoulder at the spreadsheet. “It looks like it’s written in code. What’s going on, here?”
“Oh, sorry,” Dominic said, chuckling. “I used abbreviations so I could type faster. These letters here are the locations of each separate instance, and these here are the times of their appearance. Each number after that is it’s growth in consecutive hours,” he explained.
“Can I see the blueprint?” Billy asked.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Dominic opened a different window reluctantly. The picture that came up was a frightening: dotted across Citadel’s central grid there were more than ten different groupings of red dots, and each grouping held at least three dots. The dot in sector K had grown so large that it was almost touching the neighboring dots. Dominic had programmed the blueprint to automatically update the sizes and locations whenever he inputted new data points and sizes.
“Jesus,” Billy breathed. “It doesn’t seem this bad from out there.”
“I know,” Dominic murmured. “I haven’t been looking at the blueprint, just the spreadsheet. It’s a bit…”
“Scary,” Billy finished. “Yeah, it is.”
“Did Elijah tell you about the meeting?”
“Yeah, that’s why I’m here. I’ve come to collect you; make sure you don’t get distracted and forget to come.” Billy rested his hands on Dominic’s shoulders and squeezed gently.
“I wish I could.” Dominic rubbed his eyes. “I’ve been staring at this screen for hours, but I can’t look away, y’know?”
“Mmm-hmm,” Billy agreed. He started to massage Dominic’s shoulders in earnest as Dominic rolled his neck, sighing in exhaustion. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Shit. No.”
“Oh, Dominic,” Billy groaned. “Don’t tell me you haven’t eaten at all.”
“I was… busy,” Dominic replied, knowing the excuse was lame. He felt a painful throb in his abdomen. “Oh fuck, I’m starving,” he said suddenly.
“Well that’s to be expected when you haven’t fucking eaten for a day and a half. C’mon, up you get.” Billy pulled Dominic up out of his chair and out the door. “We’re stopping for some food before we go to Elijah’s meeting.”
“No, wait!” Dominic extricated himself from Billy’s firm grasp and darted back into his room. He collected his laptop and PDA from his desk and quickly rejoined Billy outside. “Okay. Food?”
“Yes, food. Before you pass out on me. You look like death come alive.”
Dominic laughed, more out of half-hysteria than actual amusement. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You know what I mean, though. Don’t make yourself sick over this,” Billy warned.
“Yeah, yeah. Feed me, then.” Dominic shifted his electronics to one hand and reached with his other for Billy’s, who laced their fingers together and pulled Dominic forward.
Once they’d settled at a nearby deli, and Dominic had been practically force-fed half a sandwich, Dominic flipped open his laptop to stare at the list of numbers again. Absently chewing a piece of lettuce grown in Viggo’s greenhouse, Dominic finally looked away from the screen and down at his food. He still had a fair bit of his turkey-and-Swiss sandwich left and he hadn’t yet opened his complimentary bag of crisps. Dominic reached for his drink-water, this time-and sipped it slowly through the straw. When he glanced back at his laptop screen, he nearly spit out the water, but had the good sense to clap his hands over his mouth before doing so.
Billy stared at him for a moment and then, seeing that Dominic was not choking, handed him a cloth napkin. “Alright, Dom?”
Dominic wiped the water from his face and hands and began typing away at his keyboard, not answering Billy for several minutes.
“Dominic?”
“It’s-it’s-it’s… it’s so fucking obvious,” Dominic stammered, never once tearing his eyes from the screen.
“Dom? What’s going on?”
“It’s-Oh shit, we’re late.” Dominic stood up immediately, upsetting his chair, and gathered up his computer and PDA. At once he began rushing down the corridor, looking left and right for the nearest express elevator.
“Dominic!” Billy cried. He quickly scooped up their uneaten food and followed Dominic, catching up to him at the elevator doors. The ride lasted only seconds, and Billy, still trying to catch his breath from the mad sprint from the restaurant, didn’t ask Dominic again what was going on.
When the two men entered the conference room, they saw that Elijah had saved places for them and made their way around occupied chairs to him.
“I figured it out!” Dominic whispered excitedly, letting his laptop fall to the table with a clatter. “The growth pattern; it’s been bugging me for hours and I figured it out!”
Elijah and Billy, and now several of the surrounding people, watched Dominic with interest. “Well?” Elijah finally asked.
“It’s-it’s-”
“Breathe, Dom.”
Dominic exhaled once through his teeth. “It’s exponential. That’s why once it starts, there’s practically no stopping it. The last few reports I received from sector K said the growth was almost visible in real time. Unfortunately,” Dominic continued, raising his voice for the benefit of the group, “this isn’t a good thing in the long term. But luckily for us, it takes a few days for the smallest growths to get big enough for expansion to start being a problem.”
“So, wait a minute,” Sean Astin said from a few seats to Dominic’s left. “It grows exponentially?”
“Yes. I just realized it a few minutes ago. I knew I recognized the pattern.”
“What is it growing on?” Orlando asked loudly.
“I… don’t know.”
“The one in K is getting bigger by the minute. Pretty soon it will have expanded into some of the other nearby growths. I think that entire grid section is in danger of being engulfed by this stuff,” said a woman across the room.
“We have to start thinking about evacuation.”
“Evacuation to where?”
“There isn’t anywhere!”
“We have to start getting people out, though. The simple fact is this: we have no idea what this stuff is or what it’s capable of. And so far it seems pretty dangerous.”
“Not to mention volatile!”
“It’s not volatile, you idiot, it just grows quickly.”
“Well, we really don’t know if it’s volatile or not, do we?”
“Shut the hell up, all of you!” Sean shouted over the many overlapping voices. Silence fell relatively quickly as all eyes turned to him. “Now, we’re going to discuss the situation calmly and reasonably. Everyone will have their turn to speak, so long as people are allowed to speak uninterrupted. I’m going to give these guys the floor first, because they’ve been taking charge of things thus far. After that, we’ll go into a classroom setting. You want to speak, you raise your hand. I’ll call on you, and until you’re called, you don’t say a word.
“Now, what we know so far is that this organic substance, KD-142, is unlike anything anyone here has seen before. It grows exponentially, but it takes several days for it to get going. There are about ten different groupings around the grid, and so far, nobody has been able to discern a pattern in the locations.
“I heard someone mention evacuation. Why don’t we start there?” Sean’s voice had lowered until he was speaking normally, though it still carried throughout the room. He turned to Elijah and nodded.
“The fact is that we don’t have anywhere to evacuate to, but we must assume, for the moment, that KD-142 is dangerous. I think we need to at least compartmentalize people in safe areas until we figure out what’s causing these breakouts,” Elijah said loudly, standing up.
A man raised his hand; Sean pointed at him. “I don’t see why we have to do anything at all. I mean, nothing’s changed so far, right?”
“But it will,” Elijah replied. “There’s no way things will stay the same. For one thing, we’ve got a lot of extra weight, and that number will just keep growing. That’s going to affect Citadel somehow.”
“But it hasn’t yet. We don’t even know what it’s going to do!”
“Um, guys?” Dominic said nervously, raising his hand. His eyes were again glued to his laptop screen and Billy was also staring at it over his shoulder. Both men’s eyes were wide with a mixture of concern and shock.
“Dom?”
“We’re drifting off orbit.”
There was a deafening chorus of “What?!” from everyone in the room, including Elijah and Sean. Dominic held up his hands to silence everyone.
“We’re drifting off orbit, away from Earth. Nobody noticed it at first because the degrees were so minimal it didn’t matter, but… My computer just received an alert: Citadel is picking up speed and it’s getting to be enough to take us out of Earth’s orbit completely, if we continue at this rate.”
“What about gravity?”
“There must be something that… The plant must be doing something to affect our orbit.”
“So now we know how the stuff will affect us,” Elijah muttered.
“This may be nothing,” the man from before said loudly. “It may be a fluke.”
“It’s not,” Dominic growled defensively. With a few quick keystrokes, he pulled up a map of Citadel’s orbit and added in the new drift rate, factoring in KD-142’s exponential growth. The projected course sprang up in the form of a dotted green line. Dominic adjusted a few settings and suddenly the image appeared on the conference room’s projector. The group looked up at the map.
“This is our projected rate of drift,” Dominic explained. “And it’s only going to get faster, as you can see.”
“As of this moment, KD-142 is officially dangerous,” Sean said over the many gasps of alarm Dominic’s news raised. “Let’s bring the topic back to evacuation.”
“We can’t go anywhere,” Elijah said again.
“So you say. You’re not even on the transport team. Why don’t we just start sending shuttle loads of people back to Earth and other Obitons, then?”
“There are over a million people living on this Orbiton, including service workers and Citadel employees. Including you. We can’t just sentence everyone to death, and we don’t have enough ‘escape pods’, to use the archaic term, to safely transport everyone to another station. Besides the fact that the nearby Orbitons don’t have a place to put a million extra people,” Elijah said forcefully. His hands were clenched into fists by his sides.
“Citadel was designed to survive on its own, away from Earth’s orbit,” Dominic broke in loudly, standing up to draw attention to himself. “We have the means to do that, and…. Well, it’s obviously not the ideal choice in this situation, but if it comes down to a choice between death and isolation, I’d, personally, choose isolation.”
“It’s never been tested, though!” called out David, another man on Dominic’s life support team.
“But all the Earthside data shows that-” shouted a woman from across the room. Her tone was defensive; Dominic suspected she was on the design team.
“Shut up, now!” Sean Astin said in a loud, deep voice, cutting off further arguments. Dominic and Elijah both sat down. “Dominic brought up the point that Citadel was designed to survive in isolation, which is true, but only as a last resort. What are the options for evacuation? Someone mentioned escape pods?”
“Elijah said that there aren’t enough for everyone. Citadel is like a fucking modern-day Titanic,” Dominic replied, shaking his head sadly at Sean.
“Yeah, but unlike the Titanic, Citadel has a chance of recovery and survival, right?”
“Finally, someone who gets my history references!” Dominic muttered, drawing a muffled chuckle from Billy, who sat slightly behind Dominic. “Yeah, that’s right. In theory,” he then added after realizing Sean was waiting for an answer.
“What about a partial evacuation, is that possible?” Sean looked to Orlando, who shook his head and pointed at Billy.
“I’m just in charge of the internal transportation,” Orlando said. “Crawlers can’t leave the grid.”
All the eyes in the room followed Orlando’s finger and settled on Billy. Dominic half-turned in his chair to look as well; Billy blushed under his gaze.
“The only shuttles we have on hand at the moment are basic commercial ships; two hundred capacity. Maximum. We’ve got three of those, right?” Billy raised an eyebrow at Orlando, who nodded. “And one supply shuttle, which is twice the size, but doesn’t have any means of transporting people besides the pilot and crew, unless we just stuff people in the cargo hold.”
“We could send as many shuttle-fulls as possible to the nearest Orbitons, assuming they’re not flying with a full load,” Orlando said uncertainly. “But I don’t think we’d get many people off. Elijah’s right; there are way more people onboard than we can deal with right now.”
“I think the plan for the moment is to keep things quiet. We don’t want a panic; that will only make things harder for us later.”
“But people are going to notice that we’re drifting past the bloody moon,” David interjected angrily.
Dominic knew, from previous dealings with the man, that David wanted civilians to be fully aware of their situation. In fact, he’d spoken out about the matter in past crises, though none had been as serious as their current situation. Dominic wasn’t sure if he agreed with David or not; though he obviously preferred people being aware of their fate, he definitely did not want to raise a panic.
“How about security?” Sean continued as if he hadn’t heard David’s objection. “Bean?”
“We’ve handcuffs and stun-guns, that’s it. There’s a strict no-weapons policy that applies to the law enforcement as well. We’ve nothing to fight this shit with, and nothing to deal with riot control,” Sean Bean answered in a slow, even voice. He’d obviously already thought about his options as Chief of Security.
“Jesus,” Sean muttered, running a hand through his short hair.
Dominic wondered when Sean had become their impromptu leader, but he didn’t question it. Sean was a good fit for the position, whether he wanted it or not.
“How soon will we lose contact with Earth?” Dominic asked him quietly.
“Three days, at this rate,” Sean replied immediately, not looking up. “But if your model’s rate is correct, our drift will get steadily faster, so maybe less. I don’t think my team can finagle much more time than that; we just don’t have enough transmitting power.”
“Even with those boosters I put in a month ago?”
“Orlando, that was an internal system.” Sean unintentionally aimed a portion of his frustration at the young transport technician, but he quickly softened and continued, apologetically, “It runs on a different type of wave, and I don’t think we’ll be able to switch the frequency.”
“What about old radios?” Dominic piped in hopefully. “NASA used them for ages, right?” He received blank stares from his colleagues.
“Dom, those don’t work anymore,” Billy murmured.
“They used to, though, right? I mean, that used to be the only way to communicate with spacecraft.” Dominic looked to Sean for support.
“Right, right,” Sean agreed slowly. “But I doubt anyone on Earth is still using that system.”
“We’ll tell them to set it up now, then,” Elijah said. “If I build you the right kind of radio, can you boost the signal enough to keep up a link with Earth?”
For once, Sean smiled. “I think I might be able to do that. You’d best get working, ‘Lij.
“I’d say this meeting is adjourned for the moment. All teams need to coordinate with each other, but I think we have too many opinions to do that here. I want team leaders to meet afterward, along with Dominic and Elijah. The rest of you, follow instructions from your leaders.”
With a final nod from Sean, the occupants of the conference room stood up en masse and made for the exits. Only a small group stayed behind and began to gather at one end of the long, oval-shaped table.
Dominic’s department head, Richard Black, pulled him aside for a moment.
“Dom, listen. You’ve been handling this really well so far, but don’t bite off more than you can chew, alright?”
Dominic narrowed his eyes at his boss. “What’re you saying?”
“I don’t want any mistakes on this, and you’re running yourself ragged trying to be a hero.”
“I’m fine, thank you very much, and I’d greatly appreciate you not trying to steal away my position in this group,” Dominic hissed, his jaw clenched tightly.
“Dominic, don’t act like this. You know I hold you in the highest respect, but trying to do this yourself is insane, you must realize that.”
“Y’know what, Richard? Back. The hell. Off. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into, it’s true, but you don’t know any better than I do, and frankly, you’re barely holding onto your job as it is. I wouldn’t trust something this important to you in a million years.” Dominic drew himself up to his full height, a whopping five feet, seven inches, and tried to stare the taller man down.
“Dominic?” Sean called, interrupting them. Richard fumed silently until he realized that Dominic wasn’t about to back down and he finally, reluctantly broke eye contact, allowing Dominic to turn and answer Sean.
“Are you coming?”
“Yes, I’ll be right there.” Dominic said loudly. He then frowned in Richard’s direction again. “When this meeting’s over, I’m going to call for a vote in my team to put you out of office. I’m pretty damn sure they’ll vote for just about anyone that’s not you. I don’t really care if it’s me or not, but as long as you’re out of the picture, I’ll be more than happy with the result.”
Dominic turned on his heel and marched away from his boss. They’d never really clicked, and the man had only reached his position in Citadel’s hierarchy by donating an absurd amount to the project, the life support system specifically. Richard had, in fact, single-handedly paid for the air purifiers for the entire grid. It was a grand gesture, and Dominic was sure that Richard had done it out of passion for the Orbiton’s success, but the man could not figure out how to run a team if life depended on it. As the years passed, Richard had gotten more power-hungry and had tried to claim at least partial credit of his employees’ work.
Dominic was extraordinarily pleased with himself for putting Richard in his place, but it was a small victory in the grand scheme of things. The action had no effect on Citadel’s survival, only on Dominic’s (and probably the rest of his colleagues’) moral.
Billy caught Dominic’s hand and pulled him close to whisper in his ear, “What was that all about?”
Dominic, smiling, replied, “I’ll tell you later.” The two then settled down for part two of the station-wide emergency meeting.
“So, Elijah, your guys and my guys need to work together on a radio that will broadcast over long distances,” Sean began, gesturing to Elijah and the official structural-design team leader, who were sitting side-by-side.
“Yeah. We’ve got a couple of people who specialize in communication, so they’ll be able to mediate between the two departments,” the older man beside Elijah said.
“Dominic, life support. What’s going on there? And… where’s that guy?”
“He’s no longer the department head,” Dominic replied smugly. “I’m taking over for the moment.”
“Good. So, what’s the deal, then?”
“I think our first priority is to find out what the plant is living off of,” Dominic said, nodding at Viggo.
“Yes,” Viggo continued. He’d dressed up slightly for the meeting, wearing a clean shirt and jeans that only had worn spots in the knees, not holes. Dominic couldn’t tell from his position if his friend had donned real shoes or not. “If we figure out how it lives, we can figure out how to kill it. Another benefit to that would be discovering how it’s putting us off orbit, because it can’t be mere weight. That would pull us closer to Earth, not away.”
“Is the stuff endangering people or just Citadel as a whole?”
“As far as I can tell, the organism hasn’t had an effect on in the inside of the station. I doubt, however, that it has the ability to survive in absolute zero-atmosphere, so, as I said, our first order of business is to figure out what it’s feeding on.”
“Okay, who can help with that?” Sean asked, looking around the table.
“Well…” Dominic began, again gazing at the slowly revolving blueprint on his computer. “It’s only been appearing on support beams so far. Maybe… maybe there’s a reason for that. A couple of my guys can crawl up in there and take a look.”
“Perfect. Research and development, you keep working on the samples you’ve got, see if you can find out anything more about it. I think Andy Serkis has already contacted Earth about it, right?”
The team leader, an old man with a bushy white beard, nodded. “He’s been concocting new tests to run the sample through all day, and he’s got a team down there working ‘round the clock as well. Hopefully we’ll have some information for you soon, Sean.”
“Alright, well.” Sean sighed heavily. “Billy, do you have anything to add?”
“Not really. We’ve already discussed the evacuation issue. There’s no way to transport that many people within the time limits we now have. I’m sorry.”
“No, that’s alright. Does everyone here know how to contact everyone else?” The group nodded. “So, keep working, keep the other teams posted on your progress, and if anyone comes up with any new information, pass it around. It may not be useful to you, but to another team, it might be exactly what they’re looking for.”
Sean nodded decisively and proclaimed the meeting adjourned. Viggo stayed seated while the rest of the group filed towards the exit. Dominic, with Billy trailing behind him, took a detour and sank into the chair next to Viggo.
“That went well,” he said sarcastically.
“It went better than I expected, actually,” Viggo replied, shaking his head.
“Well, at least we’ve got everyone on alert now.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“I can’t believe how far we’re drifting out of orbit, though,” Billy mused.
“That was unexpected, I agree,” Viggo said. “I didn’t think it would have that effect.”
“I think that was impossible to predict, actually. I mean, if anything, it should’ve pulled us towards Earth, like you said earlier.”
“And instead we’re on the fast track to a crash landing on the Moon,” Dominic groaned.
“We won’t crash, Dom. The moon’s not in our path. It’s space debris I’m worried about now. You haven’t been out there recently; Orbitons and space stations and even Earth have been dumping shit out here for a while now. It makes it… interesting to fly a shuttle through.”
“Oh great, thank you, Billy.”
“I’m just letting you know. Citadel doesn’t really have anything to protect itself from a barrage of space trash. Staying within the Moon’s orbit and being surrounded by other space stations has protected us, but if we get too far out, we’re subject to a whole new set of problems.”
***
chapter 7