The Orion Plague (3 page)

So he fit snips of code into the program here
and there, innocuous things that would by themselves cause no
problems until certain specific circumstances came about. These
conditions were unlikely to obtain in a laboratory. Sufficient
field testing might uncover them, and that was the greatest risk;
but he hoped that the induced failures, the little time bombs he
planted, would trigger only in a combat situation, when certain
things happened, and happened in combination.

At which point the user might die.

That’s the hardest thing to overcome, this
belief I might cause death. But only if these subroutines are used
for weapons, and personal bionic weapons at that, will these sets
of conditions show up. If someone is using them to walk or run
normally, or to control a loader or bulldozer, no problem. But if
they are using their servos to full or emergency capacity – such as
in combat – their nerve-data will twist, their machines will betray
them, and they will become vulnerable.

So I am not killing them unless they are
already killing someone else. I have to believe I will be saving
the lives of their targets by undercutting their ability to inflict
harm. Simply put, I’m gambling that more good people are saved by
this Trojan worm than will die from it.

He couldn’t do anything more to help his
cause. Their four workstations were networked and theoretically any
one of his minders could see what he was doing. Only by working
subtly, and carefully watching who was distracted and when – Bennie
liked to play an unauthorized shooter video game on his break,
Marvin tended to doze after lunch, and Stanley had a secret stash
of porn – was he able to painstakingly build his virtual time
bombs.

If only he could ever log on to a system that
could access the internet, he could get a message out. But as far
as he could tell there was no wireless network in the area he was
allowed, and very few portable computers of any type. No one talked
or texted on phones or tapped on touchpads, nor set up laptops on
their lunch breaks. He saw more actual paper books here than he had
in a long time. Rick presumed that all personal devices were
prohibited and official ones were tightly controlled. Governments
may change but bureaucratic mindsets seldom did. In this case the
procedures served his slave-masters well.

So he joked with his minders, he didn’t cause
the guards trouble, and he filed away everything he could in his
memory as the days went by. And every night before he fell asleep,
he prayed for his spymaster mother to uncover this place, for Jill
to come after him, and for divine help for both.

Inside the orphaned tent Jill Repeth found
her team waiting. A battery lantern hung from the long pole, and
Grusky had somehow gotten his hands on a pot of coffee and a dozen
doughnuts, a testimony to his senior-NCO procurement skills. She
let him have his moment of glory as he gestured toward the luxury
food, taking a cruller and nodding appreciatively. It went down in
five bites, chased by a half a cup of scalding black. Another
benefit of the Eden Plague: no lasting tongue-burns.

Once she’d paid due homage to breakfast, she
tipped her duffel carefully until the goodies spilled out. The
others gathered around, laying out the gear on the canvas
floor.

“Interesting mix you have here, boss,” Butler
commented as he picked up a kilo brick, turning it over to inspect.
“C-4, blasting caps, clacker. Claymores. Grenade launchers. NVGs,
night sights, infrared laser designators…some of the new
squadcomms?”

“And this is just the small stuff. Lay it out
nice, organize it functionally, distribute it among our five
rucks.”

“Uh, Master Sergeant, how are we getting
there? Wherever ‘there’ is?”

Repeth swept her eyes around the small
circle. “I think you guys have earned the right to call me ‘Top’.
Fair enough?”

They all broke out in grins, though Grusky
quickly hid his. “Thank you, Top,” he said quietly. “But our
transport?”

“Our ride’s outside, Grusky. Lockerbie, you
still shit-hot behind the wheel?”

“Never better, Top. Been doing nothing but
driving these past weeks.”

“Well, you’ll appreciate this. Leave that
there.” They walked outside and Repeth buttonholed a passing
Marine. “You, Marine, you are now on guard duty. Go in that tent,
guard the contents, don’t touch a thing, and if anything is missing
when I return, as much as one shell casing, I will personally stuff
you in the nearest gun and fire you from its barrel, do I make
myself clear?”

“Clear, Master Sergeant!”

“Proceed.” The Marine marched inside,
clutching his service rifle nervously while Repeth led her team
around the corner of the headquarters building to the edge of the
parking area. She walked up to and laid her hands on a beat-up
monstrosity that might have passed for a Humvee at one time. “This
is it.”

Lockerbie whistled, and the others hooted.
“What a piece of crap!” cried Butler.

“You shut your pie hole, Randy,” Lockerbie
said sarcastically, arms crossed. “Shows what you know.”

Grusky stepped back with Repeth, letting
their juniors take a closer look. She glanced at him as he stepped
close to her with a quizzical look. “Just give it time,” she
whispered. “I think Lockerbie has already smoked it out. The others
are fooled by appearances.”

“Always dangerous when meeting someone new,”
he said archly, bouncing slightly in his boots.

Lockerbie ran her hands over the oddly new
monster tires, then looked up into the wheel wells, examining the
suspension. She lay down onto the ground and scooted underneath for
a moment, then rolled out and to her feet. “Never judge a book by
its cover, boys. This ain’t your daddy’s Humvee.”

“What?” asked Butler suspiciously.

“This paint job, this scrap metal welded
on…it’s
supposed
to look beat up. But…” Lockerbie grabbed
the passenger door and yanked it open. She had to haul on it before
it would move. “Extra-heavy armor. Uprated suspension.” She walked
around to the front, popped the latches and raised the hood. “And
what is that? Some kind of supercharged diesel? Holy famolians, I
bet this thing hauls
ass
!”

Repeth nodded. “That’s the plan. And you see
what it’s got up there?” She pointed at the lightweight,
manually-powered turret above.

“What the hell is that?” Butler asked as he
craned his head.

“What the hell is that?” echoed Grusky
quietly from next to Repeth.

Repeth recited, as if from a manual, “M75
Vixen. Based on the M61 Vulcan design. Twenty millimeter
twelve-barrel Gatling. Electrically driven, selective load and
variable rate of fire from single to 9000 caseless rounds per
minute. That’s 150
per second
for you arithmetically
challenged. We have Needleshock flechette for close and personal
work, we have Armorshock ultra-charge for anti-vehicle use, and we
have tungsten-tipped depleted uranium penetrators for
structures.”

The team just stood there in silence for a
moment, then Grusky cleared his throat. “Wow. But is it sexy
enough?”

The four burst out laughing. Repeth smiled
faintly. “It’ll do the job. Butler, get up there and get familiar
with the gun, but don’t shoot anything. We’ll bring enough ammo to
practice a bit before we cross the line of departure. Lockerbie,
test drive it around HQ here, gently. We’ll get your personal gear
set up. Be back in one hour.”

***

Jill was itching to get going but she forced
herself to wait one more day. A week would have been better but she
didn’t think her patience extended that far. One day was enough,
barely. These people were veterans, even if they weren’t special
operators. Just dedicated MPs, willing to put their necks on the
line for her. They needed the day to familiarize with their new
gear.

In a line team, cross-training was a luxury,
a state of being often only achieved after long practice and
demanding drill. The next-best thing was to put her people to the
jobs they did well and hope she didn’t lose any of them
before…well, hope she didn’t lose any at all.

Fat chance. But truth is, I’ll risk them all
for Rick.

Once that assessment would have concerned
her. Would have driven her to question herself and her motives, to
have aborted the mission. It makes no sense to risk five to rescue
one. As a Marine, she never understood the Air Force’s insistence
on putting together an enormous mission package to go in and rescue
one downed pilot.

DJ Markis had tried to explain it to her
once. “Look,” he’d said, “a strike pilot has to go alone and
unafraid deep into enemy territory. He – or she – has to be at peak
effectiveness in the midst of an enemy bent on killing him. That
aviator has to know in his guts that we – PJs like me, and the
rescue squadron aircrew – will risk our lives to get him out. Only
then can he hold nothing back.”

It made a certain kind of sense, but still
seemed like mistaken priorities to her. Now, though, she was going
to go off and do the same damned thing. Five for one. And from the
nation’s point of view, risking five irreplaceable troops for one
foreign liaison officer wasn’t doing the US any good
whatsoever.

But it’s not just about Rick, is it? It’s
about the Professor, and these strange rumors coming out of the
Death Zones. Take a few megatons of nuclear yield, stir in some
alien viruses, add a dash of Unionist biological experiments, et
voila, you get…what? That’s why they’re letting me go. Not for
Rick.

For information.

So they’re using you and you’re using
them.

She pushed her speculations out of her mind
to focus on the mission prep. She got their secure squadcomm set
up, with their heads-up ballistic eye shields, cameras,
voice-activated bone-induction mikes, integrated noise cancelling
filters, and a few more nifty features only a military cybergeek
could love. She ran them through drills with the explosives, the
Claymores, and all of the other specialized weapons they would be
bringing in the Beast.

That’s what they had dubbed the uprated
Humvee she had wangled out of the special ops unit based in
Charlottesville. It had taken waving that very special paper at
their commander, and a phone call to Pueblo, but in the end she had
gotten everything she needed.
We need guns
, she had quoted
to herself as she drove off with the Beast.
Lots of
guns
.

Now a piece of abandoned pastureland off to
the west spat puffs of dirt into the air as ball ammo poured
through the electric Vixen. Like a hippo gulping water the Gatling
swallowed a hopper of twelve hundred caseless shells in eight
seconds and belched a continuous stream of bullets, tearing up the
turf and shredding the orange plastic cones they had lined up as
targets. Everyone got a turn, firing, loading, clearing simulated
and real stoppages.

They practiced with other weapons as well:
Armorshock rockets and command-detonated mines, rifles, pistols,
submachineguns, grenade launchers. Throughout the day they consumed
an ammo trailer full of destruction, until finally it was filled
with nothing but emptied packages.

“I think we just went through a platoon’s
worth of ordnance,” whooped Butler as he flattened the cardboard
boxes to make them all fit back in the trailer bed.

“We’re not done yet,” replied Repeth.
“Unhitch that thing. Everyone takes a turn at driving the Beast.
Lockerbie, you are now the instructor. Get teaching.”

Lockerbie nodded. “All right. Donovan, take
the driver’s seat first. I know, it’s tight for a big guy like you.
Now, three and six on the wheel. It’s an automatic transmission so
don’t worry about shifting. Reach over there for the starter…”

Sundown came early as clouds rolled in from
the west, thunderheads rumbling in a distant overture across the
Shenandoah Mountains’ Skyline Drive. Rain squalls hit just as they
pulled up to headquarters, becoming a cloudburst, and then settled
down to a steady drizzle. Temperatures fell into the forties
Fahrenheit and stayed there.

As they got out, Repeth dismissed them.
“Everyone go get a good eight hours sleep. Reveille’s at 0415. I
got a couple cooks getting up just to give us hot chow so meet at
0430 at the mess.”

Rick immediately noticed something out of
place. Instead of three guards with Pancho leading them it sounded
like four outside his door. With little else to do as he lay in his
bunk, he had gotten very good at discerning among the little sounds
of the prison. As his door opened he found out he was right. Pancho
and two of his men were there but also a fourth, a short mixed-race
woman in a starched lab coat.

From her blocky comfortable shoes to her
tightly pinned hair she seemed all business. Rick immediately
nicknamed her “Frau Blucher.” He watched her as she stepped into
the cell and looked around like a horse-buyer examining a
stall.

Sniffing disdainfully, she walked over to
where he sat. Reaching out to twine her fingers into his hair, she
abruptly and painfully pulled it backward, grabbing his throat with
the other.

He froze, aware that he was helpless with the
three toughs watching; besides, he wasn’t worried about permanent
damage. There was no such thing since the Eden Plague.

Roughly the woman palpated his throat, then
pulled his lower eyelid down, staring into his ocular cavity.
Removing a penlight from her pocket she shone it up his nose, then
into his pupils, then his ears. Lastly she opened his mouth and
examined his teeth, tongue and throat. Not a word was spoken as she
released him and turned on her heel to stump out. Pancho shrugged
and might have smiled sympathetically as he caught Rick’s eye
before closing and locking the door.