The Reaper Plague
Authors: David VanDyke
Tags: #thriller, #action, #military, #ebook, #war, #plague, #alien, #apocalyptic, #virus, #combat, #science fic tion
Plague Wars Series - Book 3
by
David VanDyke
The Reaper Plague
Plague Wars Series - Book 3
Smashwords Edition
Published by David VanDyke
Copyright 2012 David VanDyke
All Rights Reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62626-014-6
This ebook is licensed for your personal
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author.
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means
whatsoever (electronic, mechanical or otherwise) without prior
written permission and consent from the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, businesses and incidents are either products of
the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
Thanks to my friends and fellow authors
Vaughn Heppner and B.V. Larson, for their encouragement, for
persevering and showing me the way. Check out their awesome
books.
Thanks to my readers – my lovely wife Beth,
my father Chet, my friend and fellow author Ryan King, and the
members of our Friday Night Writes group – Carol Scheina, R. Brian
Roser, and Duane Lee, talented authors all - for their excellent
critiques; their feedback has made me a better writer and this book
a better novel.
Cover by HumbleNations.com
The ReaperPlague
is Book Three of the Plague
Wars series. It is not a stand-alone story
Plague Wars
Series
The Eden Plague - Book 1
The Demon Plagues - Book 2
The Reaper Plague - Book 3
The Orion Plague - Book 4
Comes The Destroyer - Book 5
, coming
Summer 2013
Stellar Conquest
Series
First Conquest
-
Book 1
coming
Spring 2013
Desolator
- Book 2
coming
Spring 2013
Other Works
Unfettered
Low Justice
For more information visit
http://www.davidvandykeauthor.com/
The alien shuttle lifted smoothly,
accelerating without the heavy G forces Skull expected. He kept a
close eye on Raphaela as she manipulated controls, making note of
what she did and what resulted, hoping to learn enough that he
could fly the thing if he had to.
Raphaela sat calmly in her seat; like his,
hers had extruded itself from the floor when she had first begun
piloting.
Skull noticed the chairs had slowed but not
stopped in their forming, subtly shifting shape beneath them until
they were very comfortable. He suspected they conformed to their
individual bodies. “Can you make some kind of viewscreen? A big one
in the front, like on Star Trek?”
Raphaela nodded silently, touched several
controls, still incomprehensible to him – perhaps she saw colors he
couldn’t – and granted his request.
A giant screen manifested itself slowly in
front of the control room, smaller displays and instruments moving
smoothly out of the way, as if they floated on the surface of the
wall.The display flickered to life, showing a blazing but immobile
star field.
Skull smiled, tired but pleased. “Damn. I
wish I’d have asked about that sooner, when we were still in the
atmosphere. You know what, I flew in the cockpit of a C-17 coming
back from Iraq. After a stopover in Naples, the plane was mostly
empty of passengers and the flyboys let me sit up front as we were
going over the Alps toward Ramstein. We could see airplanes above
and below and to the side of us in the air corridor, some going in
our direction, some flying the opposite way. It was amazing. Like
an IMAX movie, but real.”
Still Raphaela said nothing.
He lapsed into distracted wonder, gazing at
the starfield for some minutes more, finally asking, “Shouldn’t we
see some movement? Is that a still picture?”
She waited, then finally spoke. “It’s a
hyper-accurate representation of the human-visual view from the
front of this shuttle. We are still accelerating at one gravity,
but interplanetary space is vast enough that any apparent motion is
very slow.” Her voice was flat, dull.
Skull didn’t notice her lack of affect. “Can
we see something? The Earth, the Moon?”
Obliging but stone-faced, Raphaela touched
controls and the view careened wildly until it settled on the
Earth, a small cyan disc. It jumped to hugeness as she raised the
magnification, and now his mind filled with wonder once again at
the blue beach ball floating in the black.
It’s been a long
time
, he thought
, since I was amazed by anything
.
“
How about the Moon now?”
He kept her moving the pickup around, finding the planets and
looking at them at the best magnification the ship could give them.
Skull became so engrossed that he forgot to closely watch how she
was manipulating the camera, or whatever passed for one in a Meme
ship. For long hours he also forgot her silence, and the anger
smoldering beneath her compliant exterior. Eventually he simply
stared at the screen and the blanket of bright pinpricks in the
ocean of night, drifting.
Suddenly he shook himself, looking sharply at
Raphaela. Skull couldn’t afford to sleep; not yet, not until it was
impractical to turn around and get back to Earth. He looked at his
Patek chronometer. Eleven hours. Add to that the uneasy time aboard
the B2 stealth bomber and he hadn’t really slept in at least a day.
Have to keep awake
.
“
Do you want to talk?” he
asked.
“
Huh,” she grunted, and
said nothing further.
“
So…” he trailed off. Skull
really had no idea what to say to her. He’d never taken a hostage
or kidnapped anyone in his life. It wasn’t his way. Normally he
just killed people. He just didn’t know how to relate to someone in
his custody. Finally he said, “How long did you say this would
take?”
“
To reach the Watcher
station will take about a week.” Neither her head nor eyes had
moved from their frozen observation of the instruments in front of
her, and her voice remained flat.
He wondered if she had decided to try to
punish him for her situation. Some sort of psychological tactic,
flattening emotional responses? Or simple sulking pique? He could
only guess; he was no expert in psychological warfare. Trying to
remember his counter-interrogation classes, he attempted to recall
what techniques would be used to break down resistance or disturb a
stable psyche, but it had been too long.
Damn it, Skull
, he
berated himself,
you’ve become a one-trick pony over the last
ten years as a sniper
. Running his hands over his shaven pate
he detected the bit of stubble growing.
I should probably just
minimize my interaction with her for a while, until I can get some
sleep
.
He found himself staring at Raphaela, idly
wondering what she would be like in bed, then he scolded himself
for such thoughts. Having lived so long as a celibate warrior monk,
might all that pent-up energy be finally shaking itself free? Or
was it the effects of the self-replicating nanobots swirling
through his bloodstream, supercharging his five-decade-old
body?
He shook his head. If there was one thing he
really hated, it was too much change, unless he was driving and
controlling it. Present circumstances were of his making, he had to
admit in the privacy of his own head, but now he found himself far
less comfortable than he’d expected.
“
Maybe you ought to get
some sleep. Can you put this thing on autopilot?” he asked. Even to
himself he sounded whiny. It must be the lack of rest. Up for
thirty hours and his body seemed as awake as ever thanks to the
nanobots, but his mind was another story. Remembering from the
briefings that the nanos did not – should not – cross the
blood-brain barrier, theoretically this meant they would not
directly affect his mind.
Theoretically. Did those things get in?
Her response to his question was calm,
hypnotic, lulling. “There is no autopilot. Meme do not sleep. This
ship was not made to be piloted by a Blend. I can sleep in the
chair. You can also sleep in the chair. It is all right to sleep in
the chair…”
“
Uh huh.” Skull found
himself drifting into a light and pleasant trance.
Can’t go to
sleep yet, but this is okay. Have to travel far enough out into
space so we can’t go back….
He sat up abruptly, shaking his
head as he shifted his hands on his drooping assault
rifle.
She stared at him now with apparent
amusement. “Warrant Officer Denham –”
Wryly. “Call me Skull, please. It’s not like
you have a rank, after all.”
“
Oh, but I do. It’s
Captain, Free Communities Armed Forces.”
Skull laughed. “Is that what she told you?
The woman you ate?”
Raphaela’s rich contralto voice suddenly
resonated and penetrated his nervous system, and he had to clamp
down hard to quash the desire rising in him.
“
I didn’t
eat
Captain Sophia Ilona. I
am
her, all of her and all of
Raphael, and now I am Raphaela. And I very much enjoy being
Raphaela, and being a woman. And I’ll call you Alan.” She rose from
her seat, languid, her curves showing though her gown as she
sashayed – he could describe it no other way – toward
him.
…
and his head dropped back
limp and hit the panel behind, jarring him awake. For a moment two
scenes shared his mind, the false one of fantasy and the true one
of waking. Abruptly it resolved into the conscious one, the real
one where Raphaela stared at him from her seat,
expressionless.
It didn't happen. Did I want it to?
Anger surged through him, at himself for drifting off and dreaming
what he dreamed and at her for that insufferable amusement and
condescension –
but that was in the dream...
He snarled and
gripped his assault rifle harder. “Shut up, you.”