[center][h2]The Vanguard Fleet[/h2][/center]

They'd arrived nearly two weeks ago and in the time since, shockingly, nobody on either side had been viciously murdered yet.  Of course for all that Sarina wasn't a politician she could see why the situation was so touch and go.  The language barrier was bad enough, and that was discounting the rumours that the expedition fleets were mythic 'world eaters' bringing death wherever they went.

Then again, perhaps that wasn't so inaccurate.  Oh Amelia had been in seemingly endless negotiations with the governing guild of the city they'd docked off, promising them the danger they'd heard of was exaggerated and that the Vanguard fleet came in peace, but there was a reason Sarina had demanded as few of the passengers went ashore as possible.

Disease was a hard thing to contain, and even with just Amelia and a few guards going ashore Sarina worried things would go badly, quickly.  Perhaps not for the...  Inhuman species that lived in the city, but the fact there were normal people on this side of the gate was as intriguing as it was terrifying.  If Amelia got sick the medical staff could treat her, even if the bacterium or virus was foreign, but if she spread something so simple as the common cold to a people whose biology had never encountered it?

It didn't take a dedicated biologist to know what would happen.  Nobody really knew the exact numbers, but it'd been mooted nine out of ten natives in the new world died from disease when the Europeans started colonizing the continent.  Even if it was only half that here, the damage would be irreversible.  The island they'd anchored off was small, but from what Amelia had said it had tens of thousands of inhabitants, perhaps as many as a hundred in total. 

They'd deplete their entire stock of medicine in a week if the worst happened.  Worse yet, against Sarina's urging, Amelia and the other members of the High Cabal had opted not to inform the islands inhabitants of the danger.  They felt the risk was small enough that disrupting negotiations wasn't worth it.  Idiocy.

Sarina's macabre musings were disrupted by a gentle tap on the shoulder, her head jerked up and she looked back to see Kevin smiling knowingly at her.  Ah, she'd zoned out again.  What had they been doing?  Oh, yes, tyring to avert that whole worst case scenario by cultivating penicillin.  Not that it was the most effective medicine against some bacteria, but hopefully Humanity had left MRSA back on Earth.  Hopefully.

With a sigh she brushed her light blonde hair out her face and asked Kevin, “Is the Penicillium growing as fast as we expected?”

The somewhat portly man grimaced before replying, “No, the fermentation tanks were built after we came here, they're to specifications but I'm afraid there will be a bit of trial and error maximizing the molds growth.  Thankfully we have more than enough equipment to extract the Penicillin here on the [i]Prometheus[/i], but unless we move production to a larger facility, we just don't have the space to make what we'll need.”

“So,”  Sarina guessed at his meaning, “You think we need to move production onto the island?  Don't you think that would just make everything, well, a tad more urgent?”

Kevin only shrugged, the older man was shorter than Sarina, but sitting as she was he towered over her.  She wondered if Oswald would have ever tolerated that, the Captain did have a fixation with being larger than life to his subordinates.  Before the line of thought seized her attention Kevin spoke, “It's a risk we'll have to take sooner or later.  I don't think this world has much uninhabited land, and I'd rather work with a native population to minimize our impact than risk infecting some mainland nomadic tribe which goes on to wander into a major urban centre.”

She couldn't argue with that.  Still, the antibiotics were only the start; the team dedicated to vaccines was struggling to make do with what they had.  Without a way to safeguard against....  No, Kevin was right.  They'd spend an eternity in these ships if they refused to take the first step.  People would die, Sarina knew it, but she'd joined the Vanguard knowing that building something new, something better, wouldn't be bloodless.

She'd already stood by while Oswald sunk half the ships the UN had assigned to their group.  Sarina scowled and met Kevins gaze, they both understood the need to rush.  The other expeditions would be coming, and long before they'd be ready to fight them off at that. 

“Ok,”  She hesitated, “I'll tell the rest of the High Cabal.  Ideally we can set up a camp away from the population centres, at least until we have enough antibiotics, and if we're lucky, vaccines for the islanders.”

Kevin nodded and went back to monitor the fermentation chamber, the first of many.  So much to do, and no time.

No.  No time at all.