Chapter 20

Captain Kufuor was a very worried man.

Damn, near a quarter of the passengers and some of his crew had come down with some virus, and they’d already had twenty deaths. It hit swiftly, and it hit hard. The infected person either survived the first twenty-four hours after the rash appeared or they didn’t.

So far, all of the deaths, bar one, were women. Most of his passengers were families or teenage orphans. Why he had drawn the short straw for this lot, he didn’t know. He couldn’t think what he had done to offend God to be punished in this way.

Apparently, the SWA nations had spent the previous year rounding up the orphans between fourteen and seventeen. They were a mixed bunch, as many of them were half-African at best. Most were the unwanted result of their mother’s profession.

The orphans had been put through an intensive agricultural or building training program and then sent to his ship. He had two hundred females and a hundred male teenagers running around on his ship.

Of the families, he’d had thirty couples under twenty-five. They’d each had a single child under the age of five, and while the baby girls outnumbered the boys, two to one, this was a good split with current birth rates. Two of these kids were now without a mother.

Of the other ninety passengers, thirty were couples between twenty-five and thirty-five who had agreed to care for their group of twenty orphans. Two of these men were now single. The other thirty people had paid to be on this trip, or they had been hired into government positions. They obviously had money.

Ten of them had been women, and they had been wives of the rich who were seeking to get richer. Those men were now seeking new wives. He had also lost two female crewmembers and four of the orphaned girls.

Dr Hu Jintao was one of the Captain’s biggest thorns. He had orchestrated the training and sending of the orphans and their overseers. He was also one of the rich and influential people. His wife had been one of the first couple of people to get sick and the first to die.

The woman, who had come down with the first signs of the sickness just after the first wormhole jump, had been the second to die. The mutated virus seemed to take about three days to incubate, and then the rash appeared with the fever.

The only man to die had been the carrier. Minister Henry Annan, who had been the new Minister for Foreign Trade. He went out of the maintenance airlock between jumps with some help. He had actually not shown any signs of the illness.

It was only after Henry had screwed the new Minister for Transports wife, and she had died cussing him, did they learn that he was the only male who carried the original strain of the virus.

Henry had screwed the doctor’s wife, and he had also screwed Mr Jeffers’ wife. She had also died, but not until she had screwed the Purser, who the Captain knew to be a known pussy hound.

Who knew who else he had screwed because he wasn’t telling? He hadn’t spoken to anyone since the women started dying, and he was in some form of catatonic shock.

Johan wasn’t sure who killed Henry, nor could he blame them. Half of the damn adults had been busy playing musical cabins since their first week aboard; boredom was a bitch. Dr Hu had found that most of the adults were infected with the mutated virus.

He was really pissed when two of the younger orphaned females also got sick and then died. Five of the older girls had since become sick. Two had died, two were recovering, but the fifth was critical.

He had ordered their level to be completely isolated to try and protect the other girls. The next three weeks were going to be hell for him, trying to keep the sexes separated.

So far, Dr Hu believed that the virus was only passed on sexually. He had started ranting and raving at Johan when the younger girls got sick, so he had to let the distraught doctor test everyone on the ship. The problem was that Johan had no way of proving who had screwed the girls who had died.

He was even less happy when he found that some of the boys were also infected. They had run a slight fever, but none of them had died. They also swore black and blue they hadn’t been with the girls. The boys all confessed to having been with an adult and were happy to name them under the circumstances.

The fact that two of the adults were male and they had picked the youngest boys had really pissed the Captain off. He hated paedophiles. The three older boys, who were now eighteen, had all been with wives that were infected. None of the men or the infected boys had got very sick if they did show any signs.

Dr Hu, however, believed that this would change. The virus had already mutated once, and its virulent nature and the close quarters suggested it would do it again. Johan’s biggest problem was that he knew that he was between a rock and a hard place.

If the good doctor didn’t find a cure, he was sure to have more deaths to deal with. Since they didn’t have a decent laboratory on board, this was unlikely. Even if the virus ran its course, he would be stuck on a quarantined ship until they got the all-clear.

This could take weeks to months after they arrived. While women outnumbered men, a viral outbreak on a new planet that killed women would not be taken well, and it would be even worse if it got back to Earth. Even so, he was damn sure the passengers would lynch him if this happened.