Bightmares

Chapter Ten

Emi was running on very little sleep by the time Captain Eckhart of the ISNC battle cruiser Petrovis Skye hailed her the next afternoon. When she insisted they needed more time, he sounded less than cooperative or sympathetic.

“Dr. Hypatia,” he droned, “I understand your concern—”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“I am under orders to forcibly evacuate healthy individuals from the colony within twenty-four hours of my arrival unless you have isolated the cause and can assure both a cure and containment. If you and your crew do not assist me, I will assume command of the Tamora Bight and put my own crew in place to make sure it happens.” He ended the com link, leaving Emi screaming in anger.

Neither Aaron nor Sascha had raged again. Ilse stopped by with lunch for everyone—sandwiches, soup, and fresh fruit. Emi’s appetite was nonexistent, and she stared at the data displayed on the wall as the men ate.

An hour after lunch, Sascha yelled at Taber. “Get a sedative, quick!”

Emi whirled. Aaron stood in the middle of the brig cell, clenching his hands, glaring at Sascha with a murderous look.

Taber bolted for the hypos.

“Do them both!” Emi screamed as she felt Sascha’s impending rage also looming.

Sascha pinned Aaron’s arms so Taber could inject him. Then he turned and offered his own arm, collapsing to the floor next to Aaron as the sedative took effect.

Emi ran into the cell and checked both men. “Get samples, right now!”

Taber raced to comply.

She stared. What the fuck? What the fucking hell!

Her gaze fell on their food trays. Then she caught sight of Ilse, who stood in the observation room, her hand covering her mouth as she cried.

“Ilse! I need a detailed list of everything you’ve fed Sascha since the very first time we woke him up. And whatever Aaron’s had while he’s been here. And the other men we woke up, I need a list of those foods, too, cross-referenced to when they displayed symptoms.”

The governor’s eyes widened. “You think it’s related to food? I thought we ruled that out.”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t explain how Aaron caught it, but it’s a start. I mean, get me an extremely detailed list.”

Taber helped Emi stand. “We all eat the same things. Why would it affect them and not me?”

“I don’t know!” she practically shrieked. “I’m grasping at straws!” She fought the urge to cry as she pushed past him out of the cell.

Ford, who’d been out at the lander, ran into the brig conference room after Sam summoned him. “Are you okay? How’s Aaron?”

“It’s got to be in the food supply somewhere. It has to be.” She pulled up personnel records and found the head of the agricultural division. “Wake him up,” she ordered Taber. “Now. Bring him here. We need him.”

Donna’s voice sounded quiet over the open com link. “Emi, I’ve been through the ag records dozens of times. There’s nothing to indicate a problem.”

“Well, check them again,” she yelled, not caring how she sounded. “And again. The answer is there.”

“They’ve been eating planet-grown food for years,” Donna said, keeping her voice calm. “Why now? Why would it suddenly happen? It also doesn’t explain Aaron.”

No, it didn’t explain Aaron, Emi thought as she stared at a pile of snacks Ilse had piled on a table in the corner of the conference room. In her stress, she was baking overtime. Bread, cookies, muffins…

“Ford,” Emi quietly asked as a sinking feeling filled her gut. “Where did the bread come from on the Bight? After Aaron attacked me, I saw loaves of bread on the galley counter.”

He looked confused. “What?”

“The bread! There were loaves of cinnamon bread. Where did they come from?”

“I don’t know, babe. I thought you put them there. They just…” He stopped, thinking. “Holy fuck.”

Ilse had been on her way out of the conference room to get the information Emi needed. She stopped and turned. “I gave you several loaves the first day,” she quietly said. “You took them to the landing craft with you.”

Emi closed her eyes and swore. It was her fault. She’d brought the bread to the Bight. “Thank you.”

Ilse left to go question the other women and get the info.

Sam and Gregor had made it to the conference room. Emi turned on them. “You guys, did you eat any of the cinnamon bread on the Bight?”

The men nodded. “The next morning,” Sam confirmed. “We all had some.”

“And you two are fine, right?”

They both nodded.

Emi hailed Caph. “Listen to me, the bread. The cinnamon bread in the galley.”

“Yeah? Me and Parisi finished the last of it today.”

“How long ago?”

“What?”

“Caph, answer the fucking question! How long ago did you finish eating it?”

“I don’t know, babe. At least an hour or two. Why?”

She dropped her head to table and fought back her tears. “Are you okay?”

His voice sounded puzzled. “Yeah? Why?”

“What about Parisi?”

“He’s fine, too. What’s going on?”

“How did the bread get to the galley?”

“I found it in the lander. I figured you wanted it back in the galley. Didn’t you take it planet-side with you to snack on?”

“No. Governor Martinez baked it.”

Stunned silence. “Fuck,” he finally whispered.

Donna sounded excited. “Wait, this is good! It means it’s definitely not random, that it is in the food supply somehow. That just bought us more time! We’ve isolated the cause!”

Emi didn’t lift her head from the table. “That explains why he was grouchy the other morning, he must have had a little then. Maybe it takes a while to build up toxic levels.”

Ford confirmed it. “He only had a bite or two of mine the day before yesterday because he’d already eaten. Yesterday morning he had several pieces.”

Emi struggled to make sense of it. “Then why did Aaron become infected and not the rest of them?” she called out to Donna.

Donna took a while to answer. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted.

Emi lifted her head. “Ford and Aaron have the same blood type. So do some of the noninfected men. All Aaron ate was the fucking bread!”

Ford stood behind where she sat at the conference table. He rubbed her shoulders. “We need a recipe. We also need a controlled experiment,” he quietly said.

“Yes,” Donna agreed. “Does she have or can she bake more of that bread?”

Aaron and Sascha still lay unconscious. The very first time they woke Sascha up, he wanted his wife’s cinnamon toast.

Then he raged.

He ate soup for a while and didn’t get sick.

Emi bolted from the room, out of the brig. She didn’t see Ilse anywhere outside, but the colonists were still a small enough group they rarely locked doors anyway. Emi raced across the compound to the governor’s house and burst through the front door without knocking, Ford close on her heels. On the counter lay several kinds of baked goods, including regular and cinnamon bread.

Emi grabbed a loaf of each and nearly ran into Ford as she tried to get around him. He grabbed her arms. “Slow down, sweetie. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” she sobbed. “If we can’t solve this, they’re dead!” She forced her way past Ford and ran back to the brig. Rummaging through her medical supplies, she found doses to counteract the sedative and ordered Taber to open the cell.

Taber tried to talk her out of it, but Emi reached around him and slammed her palm against the control panel, releasing the energy gate.

She awoke Aaron first, then Sascha. As usual, the rage was gone. Ilse returned with some of the wives of the other men and a list of foods on a hand-held. Emi scanned the list. Every man who’d had a rage had something with a grain product in it.

“It’s in the wheat,” Emi said.

By this time, Dr. Gould, the head of the agricultural division, was awake. They now had him, Aaron, and Sascha seated at the table in the conference room. Emi hated to dump this on Dr. Gould while he was still groggy. Unfortunately, she had no choice. “Tell me about your wheat.”

He looked understandably confused, his brown eyes rheumy, pupils slightly dilated from the lingering effects of the sedative. “What? Who are you?”

“I don’t have time to explain, Dr. Gould. Please, this is very important!”

The man thought about her question. “What do you want to know?”

Emi knew her frustration and agitation were getting in the way of her reasoning. “Donna, help me here,” she called out.

“Dr. Gould, we think the source of the infection is in the food chain,” Donna said. “Captain Lucio became infected after eating cinnamon bread made by Governor Martinez. We’re trying to pin down all sources.”

“Well, our wheat is all grown here on the planet, from cultivated seed stock. We did extensive testing on it beforehand. You won’t find anything wrong.”

“What changed,” Donna insisted. “Something changed in the past six months, it had to. What’s different now from six months ago?”

Emi wanted to grab him, shake him, scream at him that his life was in danger. Instead, she clenched her hands, her fingernails painfully digging into her palms.

Dr. Gould rubbed a hand across his forehead. “We had our first harvest of totally self-contained seed stocks three months ago, of hard spring wheat stocks. Our human-consumption corn, Durum, bran, barley, and rye have been self-contained for over a year. Livestock grade even longer. Our first self-contained harvest of soft white will happen…” He looked confused. “How long have I been out? It’s supposed to happen six months after the hard spring wheat harvest.”

“How long before the rages started did you process the wheat into flour and it made it into the colony’s food chain?” Donna asked.

Emi again resisted the urge to grab him and shake him.

“A couple of weeks, I think. We still had reserves to use up.”

That would be on top of whatever someone had in their home that they hadn’t used yet. Emi thought about Ilse and her baking. She would go through a lot more flour than others in a normal week. Her husband was one of the first to come down with it.

Emi turned to the governor. “Ilse, you do a lot of baking, right?”

“Yes. All the time. More than anyone here. I told you, it’s my hobby.”

“Dr. Shourpa and her husband are close friends of yours?”

“Yes.”

“So you give them a lot of baked goods?” Dr. Shourpa’s husband was also one of the first affected. “The chaplain, too?”

Ilse looked confused. “Yes. All the time. I mean, we’re a communal colony right now in terms of foodstuffs. We’re not using a commercial plan yet. I bake and share stuff. So does everyone else.”

“But you bake more than everyone else?”

“As a general rule, yeah. They joke that after my first contract term expires, they’re going to keep me on as the colony’s head pastry chef.”

Emi looked at the list of ingredients in the cinnamon bread. “Ilse, I need you to get me all these ingredients. Exactly these ingredients, in these quantities.”

Ilse looked confused, but nodded. “I’ll go get them.”

Donna was still searching for a commonality. “Educate us, Dr. Gould,” she started. “What is the difference between hard spring and soft white wheat?”

He turned to the com link screen, where Donna’s face hovered in the display. “Hard spring wheat has more protein in it, for starters. You want a detailed scientific description or the layman’s basics?”

Emi jumped from her seat and raced over to her computer terminal. “Could it be a protein reaction?” she called out to Donna.

“I don’t know. Run samples through the scanners.”

Sascha stared at the bread. “First, we need to test the theory,” he interrupted. “We need to confirm it.” He looked at Aaron.

Aaron met his gaze and nodded. “Ford,” Aaron said, “go get the energy shackles.”

Everyone stared at Aaron.

Aaron’s brown eyes darkened when Ford hesitated and looked to Emi for confirmation. “Did you hear me? I said, go get the energy shackles. That’s an order.”

Ford nodded and went to do it.

Emi couldn’t pull her eyes from him. “I don’t want you doing this.”

“I have to.” He reached for the bread, pulled it close, and ripped off a piece. “We can be reasonably sure this is the culprit. It doesn’t tell us exactly why, but it sure as shit narrows the field.”

Ford returned with the energy shackles. Working carefully, with waves of reluctance washing off him that nearly overpowered Emi, he put them on Aaron’s arms and ankles. Taber stood ready with a syringe of mild sedative.

Ford wrapped his arms around Emi from behind, and they stood, watching Aaron as he ate the first piece and then another. Twenty minutes later, after Aaron had eaten nearly half the loaf, Emi felt the change.

“Get ready,” she whispered to Taber.

She saw the darkness behind Aaron’s eyes, felt it in his mind when the rage took him. As he rose from his seat to charge her and Ford, Taber applied the hypo to his shoulder. He slumped back into his chair, not quite unconscious.

“Question answered,” Donna said. “Now to figure out exactly how it’s affecting him and the others.”

Sascha pulled his wife to him. “Goddammit. I can’t even eat my favorite foods.”