"Bad," Lieutenant Patience "Patzee" Maganda answered, her bionic eyes fixed to the screen. They were bright purple today.<br/><br/>Installing the iris color transition option to her eyes might have been a frivolous upgrade, but it was one of the last venues of self expression she had left, constrained as she was by the dour and dull uniforms and regulation hair cuts. Patzee was a native of Orilla, and even after 300 years in Federation hands, they could not entirely erase the culture's love for color and celebration of individual identity. Planet side the fashions were wild and varied, the choice of fabric, cut, and pattern a direct declaration of whatever they wanted to reveal, from political affiliation to sexuality to even something as simple as mood.<br/><br/>Patzee's eye color were her mood indicators. Sitting with her every day for 'beers and bitching' (as Patzee liked to call it, though she has never and will never order a beer) for nearly three months, Brennen might have figured out the pattern.<br/><br/>Green was default, a soothing color that went well with her skin tone, making her seem kindly and approachable. Blue was a more frosty demeanor, cutting. She had little patience for fools and saw through bull shit with an icy glare. The lighter the color the greater her irritation. Black meant that she wanted to reveal nothing to the world, while yellow meant she was feeling flirty and playful. As for red, Brennen had only seen her wear the shade once, her eyes glinting like blood rubies as she barely suppressed her rage after reporting a fellow officer for gross negligence.<br/><br/>The moron had failed to complete his routine safety protocols in the first phase decontamination chamber, thus failing to notice the degradation in one of the sanitation ray condensers. Had the equipment failed during a scan, the ray would not only kill foreign surface bacteria on the occupants, but<i>internal </i>bacteria as well. The results would have been catastrophic. Patzee had needed six appletinis and Brennen's rational voice to keep her from strangling the idiot herself.<br/><br/>But today it was purple. And it was a rare color. A glowing ultra violet that popped brightly from her face, exotic and inhuman. Brennen has seen it perhaps twice, but not to this degree of neon brilliance. She only wore it when she wanted to escape her feelings, wanted to be resilliant and strong and confident when she was the complete opposite on the inside. When her eyes were purple, it was easier to pretend that she was as untouchable as an android, that she was only a machine following her orders. It was the only way she could look at herself later.<br/><br/>"I had to turn away a frigate full of refugees..." she murmured and then gulped half her drink. It was not her usual festive martini glass of sunny tropical colors. It was a simple glass, the liquor a foreboding black. "They scanned positive for 5-F."<br/><br/>A highly dangerous form of fluenza with erratic mutations. The isolated conditions of a space craft made each case unique, the symptoms randomized and ever evolving. It was treatable caught in the early stages but that was a Class-6 Quarantine procedure, and customs was already over capacity. Everything above Class-4 had been dismantled and repurposed to handle the increased traffic flow. The risk of exposure was just too great.<br/><br/>Patzee had been ordered to turn them away. She had given them coordinates of the closest space station capable of Class-6 but the information was useless. By the time they arrived the spread of infection would be too great, the virus advanced too far to treat. The captain knew this, and he had begged, bargained, and then screamed at Patzee that she was killing them, and she had to sit there and calmly inform him to depart or else his craft would be shot down by the weapons system.<br/><br/>"There were thirteen families aboard," Patzee said. She finished her glass and motioned for another. "There were infants."<br/><br/>Her voice was steady but her eyes blinked rapidly. The purple shine of her eyes helped disguise the wetness of unshed tears.