Brennen nodded. "Oh yeah, this is just the beginning," he said solemnly.<br/><br/>"I'll bet they'll get the Drakesman," the barkeep piped up. "Better way  to go than the guns, if you ask me."<br/><br/>Though the captain of that transport may have begged and pleaded, one hoped there were saner minds aboard, the first mate or perhaps a medic, who would convince him to enact the Drakesman Protocol. Named for colony transport ship whose passengers were afflicted by a similar pathogen, the protocol mandated that in the event a ship was deemed quarantined with no hope of rescue or cure, they were to set their ship on a heliocentric orbit, activate their disaster beacons and vent their atmosphere to space. To get 'taken by the black' as the spacers say, was one of the most painless and peaceful ways to go. There were already a half dozen "Drakes" in long solar orbits of Orilla's parent star. Regulations said after two years in vacuum a Drake could be retrieved, its bodies removed and the ship decontaminated and recommissioned, but most were left alone as floating mass grave sites.<br/><br/>Brennen looked at the tall, spindly-limbed man pouring their drinks, a 'lightworlder', from one of the lighter-gravity colonies somewhere.<br/>All he could do was drink. He had a lot of friends and relatives back home in the Core. "You have anyone back there?" he asked, thumbing his freshly-refilled glass at a video screen. He knew she was a local girl, but the fleet academies were still all in the core and people made friends from all over. "Old Academy friends, family who moved out that way?" He didn't think of his own family, back on Ankata Prime itself, and likely living near one of the major cities, or his sister, a technician at HQ. Federal Fleet Headquarters, and the iron oxide-coated moon it sat on, both had official names, but 'Red Rock' was so ubiquitous it had stuck for a long, long time.<br/>An image of its rusty, crater-filled surface criss-crossed by gleaming metal constructs graced the screen, "Red Rock on high alert; fleets called home" read the title of the muted news feed. "My sister's back there."<br/><br/>The alcohol was starting to kick in, at least. That was as much as he could have if he was going to be allowed on an EVA in the morning. Regs, plus their mandated 'public health tracker' implants  made it hard to break the rules intentionally, but a huge annoyance at a time like this.