The Reaper Plague (10 page)

“
Bullshit, you didn’t get
nothin’ from us!” Banson feinted a lunge but Cassandra didn’t
flinch. Karl raised his weapon, a naked threat.

“
I got plenty. Remember
those long conversations we had? And then there’s this.” She held
up a metal cylinder. “Say hello to your little friends.”

“
Huh?” Banson’s jaw
slackened.

“
She means, that’s our
nanos. They took our nanos out. That’s why we’re weak,” Marquez
explained.

“
No…” Cassandra said,
dropping her head in a show of pity, “
that’s
not why you’re
weak. You’ve always been weak. That’s just why you’re going home.”
She turned her back on him in contempt, shaking the cylinder
idly.

Banson broke, lunging for his tormenter.
Karl’s monster taser flashed and he dropped like a stone. Bettina
caught him as he fell, laying him gently on the floor.

Marquez didn’t move except to look down at
his comrade. “He never could control himself.” Raising his eyes, he
said, “Ma’am. I don’t want to go back. What do I need to do to make
that happen?”

Cassandra turned around. “Don’t want to go
back? Why ever not?” Catlike merriment danced in her eyes.

“
Let’s just say I don’t
think I’ll be treated kindly. Either of us. But you don’t want him
anyway. Me on the other hand…”

She laughed, throaty. “What could you
possibly offer me that I don’t already have?”

“
I’ll tell you everything I
know.”

Cassandra’s laughter strengthened. “Like I
just said…I have everything you know already. You have nothing I
want.”
Not exactly true, but…

Marquez’ voice broke. “Look, Señora, I’ll do
whatever job you want. I’ll be a prison trustee, I’ll work in the
mines, South Africa still has mines, right? I’ll start over as a
private, whatever it takes. Or send me to Australia. I hear they’ll
take anyone.”

“
Comes from starting out as
a penal colony,” she remarked, thinking. “All right, I’ll make you
a deal. One time offer, non-negotiable. First, we debrief you
completely, and you hold nothing back.”

He nodded.

“
Second, you become an
Eden.”

He gulped, then nodded again.

“
Third, you go where I tell
you to, do what I tell you to, until I decide otherwise. If you
step out of line, you’re back in a cell. And remember, as an Eden,
a life sentence is a really, really long time.”

“
Okay,” he agreed,
defeated. “Whatever you say.”

“
Good. Karl, prep Banson
for his flight home. Then take Marquez here to the clinic and shoot
him up.”

Karl looked at Cassandra expectantly. “And
then?”

Her smile was Cheshire. “Send him to
Antarctica.”

General Travis Tyler had a reputation as a
hard man. Fair, but hard. He was a man for this time, a time of
nuclear and biological horrors, of an America licking terrible body
wounds, an America with a third of its population killed within the
last few months.

As a long-serving combat veteran and the head
of the all-important nanobot research project Tiny Fortress, he
commanded loyalty and not a little bit of fear. Not since Major
General Leslie Groves headed up the Manhattan Project did one
military man have so much leeway with a United States
administration.

The scene he had in mind was designed to
leverage, to
use
, that power and that fear.

For the best of reasons, of course.

He looked at himself in his office lavatory
mirror, rubbing at his rapidly-smoothing face. It had been only
days since he had accepted the Eden Plague virus, and already he
was feeling fitter, smarter, younger.

And a bit less ruthless.

Tyler accepted the inevitable with good
grace: immortality in exchange for his killer instinct. It was a
good trade for an old man. Yesterday he and his wife had made love
with forgotten vigor and satisfaction. For the first time in years
he’d finished his five-mile morning run without downing a handful
of pain pills, and he’d begun to see the lines in his face
disappear. Instead of sixty, he now looked forty.

Fortunately his gray hair would take a while
to go.

That made it even more important that he get
on with this job. Soon many of his troops and staff would
instinctively dismiss a man who looked twenty-five, no matter how
many stars he wore. It would take years, perhaps a new generation,
to get over humanity’s biologically-based judgment ascribing wisdom
and gravity only to mature appearance.

He strode down to the waiting convoy of
vehicles that would take him to his meeting with the entire Secret
Service Presidential security contingent. “We have the body?” he
asked rhetorically. The nanocommando team leader was a good man,
and they’d discussed the plan several times; there was no doubt he
had it.

Still, trust but verify.

“
Yes, sir.” The two men
piled into the back of the armored SUV and the five-vehicle group
raced off.

It was only ten minutes or so to the
Presidential Mansion complex, but they bypassed the main residence
to pull in at the large double doors of a basketball gym left over
from the days when the government compound was a university campus.
Inside, ranks of Secret Service men and women sat in the bleachers,
most of them in their usual dark suits.

Army troops controlled the building this
time, not the Secret Service. This fact made the latter distinctly
uncomfortable; Tyler could see it in their eyes and their demeanors
as they sat. He could also sense their unease at having been
disarmed.

His ten nanocommandos stayed near him at all
times.
They
weren’t unarmed, and his people and some of the
Secret Service eyed each other like stiff-backed dogs; however,
most of the Service people kept their eyes down.

They had a lot to be ashamed of.

Two of the commandos carried a stretcher in,
its burden covered by a blanket, and set it down in the center of
the floor.
Looks like the right time for a coup
, Travis
thought.
Some of the Secret Service people are smart enough to
sense it too. But are they smart enough to wait and see? Well,
that’s one reason I had them disarmed.

“
Colonel,” he addressed the
commander of the Army troops, “clear your men out and set up an
external perimeter. No one comes nearer this building than thirty
meters.” They filed out the several exits, and then he told his
commandos to double-check the security. Only when there was no one
but his bodyguards and the Secret Service people remaining did he
begin his speech.

“
Most of you know me by
sight, but for those who don’t, I’m General Travis Tyler, in charge
of the lab complex and the base as well. And some of you know my
son.” He reached down to flip the blanket off the body on the
stretcher, revealing the corpse of Major John Thomas Tyler, US
Army, deceased.

A gasp went up from the Service personnel,
and a buzz of conversation.

“
Silence!” Tyler roared.
“Now I’m going to tell you all something some of you already know.
For those of you who don’t have a clue, count yourself lucky. For
those who do, I suggest you prepare yourself for hell, because
there’s only one way through.”

He gestured with a straight arm at the body.
“This was my son. I executed him with my own hands, for murder, for
treason on the battlefield, and for suborning treason. My son
betrayed me, he betrayed the President, and he betrayed the United
States – and so have many of you. Some of you are even now hooked
on an addictive nanobot, one which serves up euphoria and steals
your free will and your self-respect. I hear you call it nanocrack.
I bet some of you are already feeling withdrawal effects. And guess
what – you aren’t getting any more.
Ever.
Not from him, and
not from anyone else. I’ve already cleaned house in the labs. I’ve
already summarily executed three more people. Remember, we’re still
under martial law.”

Tyler could pick out many of them now by the
horrified, trapped looks on their faces. Others, showing confusion,
were likely innocent. He went on, gesturing at the body again.

“
I considered locking JT
up, trying to treat him medically, trying to rid his body of the
viruses and nanomachines he had injected himself with in a quest to
be a superman. But he spread the nanocrack he discovered to others.
He spread it to those he wanted to control; he spread it to many of
you; and he slipped it to the President, to try to control him too.
We don’t entirely know how deep the corruption goes, but I couldn’t
take the chance that my son and his hidden allies could pull off
the coup he planned. He had to be made an example. My example, so
you know how serious I am.”

Tyler paced up and down in the middle of the
wooden floor, the body and his commandos his backdrop. “Some of you
are wondering if I’m taking over instead. The answer is
unequivocally
no
. The President is being cleansed and
detoxified. For those of you who are addicted, this is your one and
only chance,
right now,
to save yourselves. If you are
addicted, stand up and walk over there, where my men are waiting.”
he pointed with an arm. “Right now, no kidding, do it right now. If
we find anyone with those nanos in his system after this one-time
amnesty, the penalty will be summary execution.”

Several people stood up immediately,
resolutely, followed by more in a wave. Within a minute over fifty
people, about half of the Secret Service Presidential security
detachment, were standing in the designated place hanging their
heads. “All right, the rest of you stay in the bleachers. There is
a medical team coming in to run tests on all of you right now.”

A man, red-faced and sweating, stood up
suddenly from the bleachers and bolted for the addicted group.
Tyler smoothly and unhurriedly lifted his .45 from its holster,
cocked it and shot the man three times in the lower torso. He
collapsed to deathly stillness on the polished wooden floor.

A ringing silence followed the three sharp
reports, and Tyler thumbed the hammer down as he swept the
bleachers with his gaze. “Apparently he didn’t believe me when I
said that was his last chance. So. One final amnesty. Five seconds.
Now or never.” He waited, but no one moved, and eventually he
nodded sharply and holstered his weapon.

“
Now listen, all of you.
You will say nothing about what happened here today. Nothing
whatsoever. No one can know the President’s protection is so
incompetent, or how
you
people failed.” His tone dripped
with contempt for those who had lapsed in their duties. “No one
need know how you soiled yourself and your reputation. That
includes what happened to my son, or this man, or any other
details. Until the United States has full control of its own
territory again, this is all top secret.”

He turned to the commandos. “Captain, take
these sorry sons of bitches to the hospital for treatment. And get
that body out of here.” He gestured at the man he’d shot.

Shot with Needleshock, but no one needed to
know that right now. He’ll live, though he’ll never be in the
Secret Service again. I hear the Free Communities have a nice
rehabilitation camp in Antarctica.

As soon as the addicted ones had been herded
out, the Army troops moved back in, warily watching as a military
medical team tested the remaining personnel. Before they finished,
General Tyler went to see the President. He had a report to make,
and he’d heard that President McKenna had a new assignment for
him.

And retirement orders.

Not surprising. From his point of view, I
have too much power. It has to be spread around. Well, I have a
long life ahead of me. Maybe I’ll be a General again, after a few
years, or a few hundred.

Skull watched
Firefly
through again,
hoping it would give him some inspiration. There were parallels
with reality, with his situation. A slow-moving spaceship, no warp
drives or sparkly transporter beams, no energy guns.
Well, none
that I know of
, he thought.
Have to ask her about
that.

And being locked inside a floating tin can
with people you didn’t particularly like.

Still not sure about that, actually
.
Not sure about anything
. He’d come unmoored somehow,
floating out here in the void between the planets. He felt himself
gravitating toward her but distrusted the feeling.
She doesn’t
actually want
me,
she just wants
someone
now that she
has time for her chick brain to start whispering to her. She
doesn’t respect me. She feels sorry for me. To hell with that. To
hell with all of them. Can’t have a woman that doesn’t respect
you.

Can’t have a woman at all, can you
Skull?

If you do, she’ll die too.

“
Good show, that.” Raphaela
interrupted his thoughts, pointing at the video. She nibbled on a
food-lump. “I always liked it.”

“
Half of you did.” He put
some bite into the comment, pushing for distance.

“
Both of me did,” she
objected without heat. “Raphael watched a lot of television too. He
thought the stories gave him insight into the human
psyche.”

Skull snorted. “Maybe. Like vomit gives you
insight into digestion.”

She didn’t answer. They watched Captain Mal
Reynolds get his crew out of another situation, something with
Reapers or Reavers or Raiders. Neither of them were really paying
attention to the show. They were trying too hard not to pay
attention to each other.