Alliance Research and Rescue has set up a monitoring station in Downriver. Ostensibly, the station and its personnel are there to provide medical assistance to the stricken population, but in practice, the AR&R are there to enforce containment and ensure that the pathogen does not make it off-world.

Using their legal authority, they have taken over traffic control and import/export inspection by federalizing the local spaceport and customs officials. In addition, citizens wishing to leave Blackwood are quarantined in AR&R isolation/observation units and must be given a clean bill of health before departure is granted. Judging by the number of iso-obso units being delivered to the monitoring station, departure clearance is unlikely to be granted in the short term.

AR&R is also closely monitoring incoming space traffic. Arriving vessels are subject to search and 48-hour quarantine. Crews are forced to remain on board their vessels until AR&R is satisfied that they are not carrying any additional pathogens.

Needless to say, this disruption of commercial and transportation activity has not been met with wide approval among the people of Downriver, many of whom feel that their only way to avoid SNS is to leave the moon. The Magistrate is only tolerating this situation because Doctor Park has all but threatened to call down the Federal Marshals to enforce a moon-wide quarantine. If that happens, Magistrate Martinez will lose the authority he has spent years entrenching.