With communications finally reestablished, Montoya calls the Desperado to deploy Gilbert’s Snack Runner VII to the cruise ship.
Montoya, Jacob, Butch, Moonkit, and Tubbs board with Credence Jones and the team’s contraband and some nice military hardware, picked up from the A.P.E. Agents – 3 jamming transmitters, 2 armored vests, a military auto-shotgun with 2 extra clips, 6 military hand grenades, a military sidearm with 2 extra clips, a demolitions kit, mechanics tools, and a number of deck pistols and gasmasks.
Gilbert, Ethel, Crystal, and Cillian remain, to help assist the passengers.
The Captain flies his team back to the Desperado and submerges it again, moments before dozens of SSPB scout ships fly in on the cruise ship!
Ethel radios the incoming SSPB to warn them of the smallpox contamination – and the SSPB sets up a perimeter to await a response team from the Center for Disease Control.
In the meantime, Gilbert contacts the Red Sharks football team and brokers a deal to hype them up as heroes for stopping the terrorists, in exchange for half the bounty on the four thugs that they captured.
News gets out of course, that the Cruise Ship Circes was attacked by members of the A.P.E. terrorist group and infected the ship with some form of genetically modified smallpox virus. Gilbert’s treatment of the Red Sharks really sets them up as heroes and they are touted in the media as having saved countless lives with their heroic action in the face of the armed attackers.
The CDC arrives on scene later that day and quarantines the entire ship – setting up a chemical biological incident response force and decontamination center on the pool deck.
Cillian is able to identify those who are infected and those who are not, using his read aura ability. He is assisted by the Feng-Shui lady that was with Doctor Benson (once she recovers her lopan that was taken and tossed into the ship’s vault when the assault team stormed the casino).
Unfortunately, Feng-Shui lady also outs Crystal as a Biokinesis Psychic almost right away. Whether through read aura or perhaps recognizing Crystal from a file or something. In an unexpended play however, Feng-Shui lady introduces Crystal to the CDC Team, as one of Doctor Benson’s Government Agents.
In an aside, she explains to Crystal that she’s not interested in anything other than preventing a pandemic and that if Crystal helps heal everyone, she is free to go afterwards, no questions asked.
Crystal is provided a biohazard suit and surges to cure herself. Following that, she is able to get to work on suppressing the toxins in others.
It is an incredibly daunting task – almost sure to cost her Psychosis. Of the three hundred and twenty some people aboard, roughly a third (89) were exposed to the genetically modified smallpox and contracted it. Of these, only five had the constitution to resist the disease on their own. Another dozen responded well enough to antibiotics to overcome it.
That left Crystal with seventy two people in need of her attention. . .
Over the course of the next seven days, Crystal (using Cillian and the Feng-Shui Lady’s ability to manipulate luck) cures all seventy two patients without a single psychotic break or even a bump in her psychosis!
As passengers are cleared of the virus, they are taken through the decontamination center and off the ship by the SSPB to another quarantine facility. Following a few days of medical tests, they are released back into the general public.
As this goes on, Montoya’s group manages to overcome the illness through antibiotics – all except Moonkit. She deteriorates so fast that in a matter of an hour, it is clear she will die – vomiting blood and going into a coma.
A plan is formed to smuggle he back onto the cruise ship, so Crystal can heal her. Tubbs volunteers to take Moonkit to the surface near the ship, where they are spotted, bobbing on the surface in life jackets, by the SSPB and brought back onboard. Tubbs explains to them that he and Moonkit were scared and tried to jump ship, but were too sick to swim.
Crystal is able to save Moonkit, who upon waking, asks blearily – “What happened? How did we get back on the ship?”
Tubbs meanwhile, is detained in the brig for a few days, and then released. There is also some question about whose child Moonkit is. She is put into the protective custody of Ship’s Security, until Child Services can pick her up and sort it out.
After a week, everyone is off the ship and leaving the quarantine facility, as the Circes is being deep cleaned.
Gilbert, Crystal, Ethel, Cillian, and Tubbs rejoin Montoya, Jacob, and Butch on the Desperado.
Turning Credence Jones in nets 300,000 writ, plus another 800,000 writ for their half of the A.P.E. Thug bounties promised by the Red Sharks.
Moonkit is placed in a foster home in Capital City, but Gilbert easily tracks her down; allowing Jacob and Butch to spirit her away from a city park within a few days.
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Topic: Operation A.P.E. (Read 86795 times)