The Reaper Plague (5 page)

Raphaela laughed, ironic. “Very selective,
your conscience.”

“
Stop that!”

“
What?”

“
Stabbing me when I try to
say something real!” He felt cracks creeping through his emotional
walls.

She stared at him incredulously. “What kind
of conversation do you think this is? Is this a
date
? Did we
just have make-up sex in the wrong order, so the fight is now?”

Skull glared at her. “I think you’re just
feeling guilty and angry it happened and you want to blame me for
it. Women never want to take responsibility for doing something
improper. They want the man to do it so they’re free of guilt. Ooh,
mom, he
made
me do it!”

“
Wow, that’s some
projection you got going. I
do
want to blame you for it
because
you’re to blame
! You kidnapped me from the lab at
gunpoint and forced me to pilot this ship off into space and then
you took – we had – whatever you call it, what we did, and how can
I help but be angry at you! And I feel guilty, yes, because I
wasn’t strong enough to say no!”

Skull sat back, grasping the arms of the seat
in frustration. “You’re right. You
are
human. No alien would
be so damned…female!” He thrust upright, seizing his rifle and
stalked into the bedroom, throwing himself onto the bed-dais.

Rolling over, he stared at the ceiling.
What the hell is going on? Who the hell am I? This isn’t me.
Something is happening that’s messing with my head. Is it the nano?
Is this what it did to JT? And the others, Section Three that
suicided, I just figured they got too froggy and high on their
abilities. But Huff, all that stuff I could hear him saying over
the link, crazy stuff, I just figured it was for effect, to keep
control of the situation, but maybe not.

His thoughts ran around in his skull like
rats trying to chew their way out. Eventually he slept, fitful.

Brigadier Nguyen composed himself, resisting
the urge to stroke his thin goatee, to check his neat short hair.
In a normal, or even an Eden, “composing himself” would be
idiomatic, metaphorical. With an aberration like him, it was more
literal. He consciously changed minds, wrapping himself in his
earlier, warmer, pre-Psycho persona. Method acting, some might have
called it, to put himself so deep into a role that he believed it,
became that person.

He pushed a button on his intercom phone, an
ancient
piece of technology – at least twenty years of age.
Spooky liked antiques, liked to keep others off balance by using
unusual approaches and devices, liked to impress people. “Send them
in please,” he ordered courteously into the device.

Politeness has no cost
, he thought.
Like Pascal’s wager, it is always win-win. For my enemies I keep
them quiescent, guessing, underestimating. For my friends – those
who believe themselves my friends, those who serve me unknowingly –
it maintains our relationships and their esteem. And for those who
are not yet either, it smoothes their path to join the ranks of my
loyal subordinates. Win-win.
He laughed to himself at the play
on words. Nguyen-Nguyen. Only a speaker of Vietnamese could hear
the difference.

His head of nanotech research, a distant
Nguyen cousin called Erik, led his two senior subordinates in to
stand in front of Spooky’s enormous polished wooden desk. He bowed,
and though not Asian, the other two also bowed with reasonably
practiced motions.

With his cousin the bow was customary. The
other two had learned that it seemed to please the Brigadier, had
told themselves that they were culturally sensitive.

To Brigadier Nguyen, it simply reinforced his
authority.
Win-win
.

He smiled, encouraging. “You have had four
weeks to work with the nanotech. I have seen your reports but I
wanted your firsthand impressions. Specifically, what is the best
way to employ this technology in the short term?”

Erik bowed again reflexively and spoke
English for the benefit of the others. “Honored Uncle, in the short
term we need trustworthy normals. The cybercommando nanobots – we
call them CCNs – cannot be injected into Edens. We are working on
reprogramming and on improving the CCNs but that is a project for
months, if not years. We are starting from scratch.”

Spooky nodded, spoke mildly. “Trustworthy
normals, uninfected by any Plague – Eden or Demon – are rapidly
disappearing from the planet. The advantages of the Eden Plague are
obvious. With the collapse of the United Governments of North
America, only the Chinese and the Russians in their paranoia have
not embraced Edens, and even there, self-infection is growing in
their population. We need another approach.”

The swarthy man to Erik’s right, Saul
Birnbaum, twitched slightly, clearing his throat. Spooky waited
until Erik nodded to him before asking, “What is it?”

“
Sir, I am spearheading an
attempt to modify the US-provided nanovaccine that
is
compatible with Eden Plague. The bots are far simpler and less
capable but I believe that within months my team will have some
that will boost human performance significantly. Perhaps as much as
twenty percent. And it will still function as a
vaccine.”

“
Excellent.” Nguyen
praised. “Please pay special attention to anything that will
improve human capabilities in space.”

The three men looked surprised. “Space?”

“
Yes. Our first priority is
not ground forces or commandos on Earth. The war will eventually
move into space, and I want to be ready to provide, oh, let’s call
them
Space Marines.
Men who can operate effectively in
weightlessness, extremes of cold and heat, even vacuum, if
possible, are your goal. For example, men who could delay breathing
for minutes or longer.”

Birnbaum nodded, then bowed again
self-consciously. “Yes, sir.”

“
How long until
prototyping?”

The scientist cleared his throat nervously.
“Perhaps…three months?”

“
You have two. I want to
see something then.” The General turned to the other. “What about
you? Do you have another approach?” His eyes held those of the
second subordinate, Deliah Pelapolos. He approved of her short dark
hair and her no-nonsense manner, and she looked back at him with no
fear.
Perhaps I shall take this one for myself as well…assuming
I can do it without interfering with her usefulness. It might be
interesting to try to manage an Eden mistress. Yes, a stimulating
challenge and something to keep Ann on her toes, perhaps. But not
yet.

“
I am working on the
long-term modification and reprogramming of the CCNs. The
difficulty is in turning off their defensive immune functions, the
programming that makes them attack all viruses.”

Spooky’s eyebrows went up. “Just
viruses?”

“
Yes, sir. They are not yet
advanced enough to discriminate between normal cells and, say, a
bacteriological infection. If they were programmed to kill
bacteria, they would kill a lot of body cells as well, not to
mention the beneficial bacteria that most humans need to survive –
in the gut, on the skin. I believe this was the best the Americans
could do at the moment. So the current cybercommandos can fend off
viruses but not something like staph, or bacterial
meningitis.”

“
That sounds like an
interesting area to study for bio-weapons against enemy
cybercommandos.”

Eric nodded. “Yes, sir. We have a tentative
plan for that but it’s not the priority right now. Unless you wish
it to change.”

Spooky pressed his lips together but nodded
in agreement.
One cannot fund and pursue every avenue. I need
more resources
. “I understand. How long for your
prototype?”

Deliah looked distressed, turning to Erik,
her immediate boss, avoiding Spooky’s eyes this time. “I don’t
know. There are too many unknowns. Best case…four to six months,
unless we get more people and equipment. I really need a new
supercomputer. Two would be better. And a number of other
things.”

“
Supercomputers are hard to
come by in these dark days, but I will see what I can do. Do your
best with what you have. I have confidence in you all. Erik, have a
list of people, or at least skill sets, that you need, in priority
order, in case the funding comes through. If there are specific
people, give me a basic workup on each – who they are, where I can
find them, and so on. Perhaps they can be persuaded to join us. Is
there anything else? No? You may go.”

Spooky watched them walking out and timed his
request carefully, casually. “Oh, Miss Pelapolos, I have one or two
more questions for you. Would you come back in please?”

Corrupting an Eden…a worthy
challenge
.

A quarter of the world away in South Africa,
two similar rooms contained the two cybercommandos captured there.
Miller had died of his wounds, but Banson and Marquez had survived
due to the efforts of their nanites, desperately rebuilding tissue
in the face of multiple assaults. Needleshock rounds had delivered
Eden Plague directly into their wounds, but the tiny defenders had
frantically destroyed millions of individual viruses, fighting off
the infection, suppressing hematoma and closing wounds, speeding
circulation and the carrying of oxygen and nutrients, a monumental,
mindless effort to assist the men’s bodies’ natural healing.

It was a triumph for the nanomachines, a
tribute to their design team’s years of work, but beyond saving
their lives it didn’t help the men. They lay conscious but confined
by restraints and a low-level tuned induction field that suppressed
the nanites’ functioning. It made them sluggish, the machine
equivalent of a tranquilizer, so they were hardly stronger or
faster than ordinary men and should be helpless in the face of
Cassandra Johnstone’s interrogation.
Presuming the nanites don’t
help them resist
, she thought.
So much we don’t
know.

The Free Communities Council’s Chief of
Intelligence – really Chairman DJ Markis’ spymaster – entered the
bare access corridor in the block of a hastily-renovated old South
African local jail, now incorporated into the Carletonville
research facility.

There was limited need for confinement in any
Free Community. Crime, especially of the violent sort, had dropped
by more than ninety percent in the last ten years even as
reporting, policing and the judiciary became more efficient and
less corrupt. The reinforced-concrete walls and inch-thick steel
doors that used to hold drunken miners and accused diamond thieves
now provided one more line of defense if the two commandos got
loose somehow.

She wasn’t entirely happy with her new role
as jailer and interrogator, as she wasn’t really professionally fit
for either. The call was out for assistance but it took time to
find, hire and assign the proper people. Right now the lab
complex’s security forces were doing the best they could running
the jail while simultaneously trying to recover from the beating
they took at the nanocommandos’ hands.

Ditto for the medical personnel – the few
that were available. Biological and nanomachine researchers were
handy and eager to literally dig into their prisoners, but most of
them were not medically qualified. She really needed someone
competent to determine and administer correct dosages of drugs to
men whose veins swarmed with millions of exotic microscopic
machines. She doubted such a person existed in this hemisphere.
Just have to make do
.

She nodded at the four guards, two men and
two women, standing in the corridor holding exotic weaponry. She
only knew two of them. “Morning, Karl, Bettina, officers. Sorry to
abuse your skills this way.”

Karl Rogett, the chief of Chairman Markis’
Personal Security Detachment, or PSD, smiled a hunter’s smile. “No
problem, ma’am.” He hefted his weapon. “Gives us a chance to play
with some new toys.”

Cassandra looked over the guards’ equipment.
Karl sported a heavy device that looked like a Buck Rogers ray gun
grown to rifle size, a super-taser designed to temporarily knock
out the nanites and the target with a heavy jolt of electricity.
One of the men she didn’t know held an automatic shotgun loaded
with, she'd been told, alternating beanbag rounds and cartridges
full of solidified gelatin pellets impregnated with knockout drugs
and Eden Plague. The other, the woman, held a grenade launcher with
a selection of tanglenet and sticky shells, and Bettina Looscher
had a PW10 submachine gun with Needleshock in case the rest of them
failed.

Unfortunately, borrowing the Chairman’s
personal security detachment was a short-term option. When they
were unavailable she had to content herself with ordinary security
guards and the physical restraints
. I really need to find some
confinement specialists
.

“
Open the door,” she
ordered. Bettina waved a badge at the scanner, then put in a code
and the door clicked. She turned a handle, lifted a bar on a
swivel, and stepped back.

Karl went in first, checked the room then
took position in a corner covering the man strapped to the table.
Cassandra walked around to the other side, out of the line of fire.
She hoped that electro-blaster didn’t have much collateral
bleed.

The man looked to be asleep, but the video
feed she’d recently watched showed him looking around so she knew
he was feigning unconsciousness. “Mister Banson?” He didn’t
respond, so she reached across to pinch his nose shut with one hand
while she covered his mouth with the other. A few seconds later his
eyes popped open and he threw himself uselessly against the
restraints. She let go.