The Demon Plagues (2 page)

Each tiny ultra-high-velocity
discarding-sabot shell accelerated a narrow penetrator to over five
thousand feet per second, able to defeat most body armor. The
needle contained a highly-charged capacitor that dumped enough
electricity into the target to put him out cold. Combined with the
ablative Eden Virus coating, it was the most effective small-arms
ammunition the FCAF had. As long as the user was careful to keep
his shots away from the enemy’s head and heart, it was nonlethal.
Every wound would initiate the Eden Plague cascade, immediately
organizing the infectee’s body to begin healing thousands of times
faster than normal, making them into Edens.

This had led to the absurdity of enemy-issued
body armor that deliberately did not protect the head and heart of
ordinary troops; their political masters preferred a dead soldier
to a converted one. As a result, enemy morale was usually low.

Spooky looked around at his team, eight
people crammed into a small submersible and crated inside a
standard high-cube intermodal shipping container. The
carefully-shielded box was designed to appear to any scanners to
hold high-quality electronic cabling; in reality the material was
mere camouflage that hid the men and the mini-sub from prying
technological eyes.

The team felt a thump as a crane lifted their
container off its stack inside the Maersk cargo ship and placed it
onto a robotic carrier on shore. The spidery vehicle followed its
electronic trails in a carefully-orchestrated dance around the Port
of Hawaii transshipment system, to join in a queue of its fellows
waiting to load onto the United Governments of North
America-flagged hydrofoil freighter
Stetson
. When the robot
attained the front of the line, it placed its container gently onto
the tarmac, precisely one meter from the adjacent box, and scooted
back down the automated roadways to its next assignment.

Shipborne trade still flowed, the lifeblood
of the world economy. Though the restrictions and checks were
repeated and onerous, vessels from all over the world loaded and
offloaded goods through Port of Hawaii.

The team tried to relax in the dimness of a
glowstick taped to the overhead of their mini-sub. They had checked
their weapons repeatedly, they had meditated and dictated family
messages into memory chips, they had told stories and read or
listened to books on their readers, they had watched movies, and
they had slept. And twice each day they put on their virtual
reality goggles, set down their weapons, picked up
motion-controllers, and ran through the mission in VR space. It had
been a long six days, and it would be one more before they could
move.

Picking them up from the tarmac, the crane on
the tender swung the metal box through the air to be deposited in
the narrow hold of the Stetson. Other containers soon joined them,
and any concerns about discovery evaporated.

One more day. The six men and two women
wiggled in their seats, seeking comfort that would not come.

Spooky let them sleep while he ran through
the mission on his own glasses once more to fend off creeping
claustrophobia. It would be tricky, and it would be dangerous, but
if they succeeded, they would change the course of the sputtering,
back-and-forth conflict between the Free Communities and the Big
Three.

After fighting one sort of war or another for
many decades, first against the Communist government of Vietnam,
then for the US Special Forces, the thought of peace, political or
personal, had seemed just a remote dream.

Until now.

Hours later a feeling of motion alerted them
to the ship’s departure, heading for New Zealand and, unbeknownst
to its crew, for an open-ocean rendezvous designated by nothing
more than a set of encrypted GPS coordinates.

Rick Johnstone opened the office door
without knocking. “Mister Chairman, they just struck Kinshasa.”

Free Communities Council Chairman Daniel
Markis’ blood ran cold. “Elise?” he asked.

“Just fine, sir. She left a few hours before.
All the staff did, when the warning came in. They’re on their way
to the facility in South Africa.”

“Thank you, Rick. You can go. Tell Millicent
to hold my calls and visitors for a few minutes, please.” Another
few thousand civilians dead, collateral damage from the UGNA’s
‘precision’ strikes. Markis put his head in his hands, rubbing his
eyes. The latest atrocity weighed on his soul. He told himself he
was not responsible, but the accusing serpent in his head hissed,
Liar!

He thought he had gotten rid of that thing
when the Eden Plague healed his body and his brain. But the virus
could only fix organic issues; he had lived with the snake for too
long before his infection to lose it that easily.

He stared at the deep crimson beret that sat
on the shelf above his desk. It was symbolic, a replacement. His
original one, the one he had kept with him everywhere he went, from
Afghanistan to Mogadishu, from Iraq to Yemen, was lost, probably in
some UGNA evidence vault. But the symbol had a powerful meaning for
him. The metal flash on its face showed an angel with her arms
wrapped around a globe, and the motto underneath: That Others May
Live.

There are worse things to dedicate a life
to
.

Markis shook himself out of his funk.
I am
the Chairman, damn it!
He was the closest thing the Free
Communities had to a leader, or at least a figurehead. When he
proposed something, it usually got done with a minimum of
wrangling, as long as it made some kind of sense. The Eden Plague
had not only wiped out disease, it had wiped out a lot of
petty-mindedness and self-interest. But it hadn’t wiped out
politics; it had just made the struggles a bit more honest.

He steeled himself to address the Council
once again. Opening his door he called, “Millicent, please ask Rick
to set up a video teleconference with all available Council members
at 1400 hours.” Two PM was a good time for videoconferences over
the secure link, from Eastern Standard Time in the Americas. Asians
and Australians would be up already, or at least could be, and
Europe and Africa would not be abed yet. That gave him half an hour
to get some lunch.

Walking down the hall to the little
cafeteria, he got himself a big bowl of stew and some iced tea. He
thanked the server and went over to look out the second-floor
window at the view of the town of Tunja, Colombia Free Community.
It was an unlikely place from which to run a world resistance
movement; that was exactly why he did.

Stomach filled and back in his office, he
reviewed his notes for a few minutes, then walked down to the
basement where the secure conference room waited. He nodded to Rick
Johnstone, grown strong, free of the muscular dystrophy that had
made his early life a creeping hell.

“Most of them are up already. I have a few
more to connect.”

“Thanks, let me know.” Markis sat down,
shuffled papers for a few moments.

“All right, everyone’s up, and you’re live,
Mister Chairman.”

Nodding once more, he turned to address the
Council of the Free Communities. “Hello, everyone. I won’t say good
day. By now most of you should have heard about Kinshasa. Here's a
video of the last strike, taken from about ten miles away.”

The feed dissolved to a grainy shot of the
entrance to the lab complex, then pulled back to see the scrubland
between the cameraman and the target, and the city of Kinshasa,
Congo, beyond. The unnamed videographer spoke as the image jumped
and steadied. “Should be any time now. Hope to hell I'm far enough
away.”

A few more seconds went by, then streaks of
light and explosions whited out the picture. As it cleared, they
could see several mushroom clouds, miniature copies of the
aftermath of nuclear explosions. One billow, off target, rose deep
inside the densely-populated city. Then the picture faded.

Markis spoke. “It was a sub-launched
ballistic missile, another non-nuclear Trident MIRV, multiple
kinetic strike. I believe this happened because someone leaked word
of the research facility there. I will tell you in confidence that
our science program has not been seriously damaged, because none of
our scientists had occupied the facility. They attacked too soon,
before the lab was in operation. But we cannot let these atrocities
continue.”

He wasn’t going to tell the full council
about the warning that his human intelligence network, his spies in
the United Governments territory, had provided. While the video
teleconference technology was secure, the Council itself, and the
staffs of the members, were not.

Like any political body, it leaked like a
sieve.

He selected one of the blinking lights that
told him the member wanted to address the Council. This was one of
his most important powers: the power to choose who would be heard,
and in what order. Best to let the opposition speak first. “Yes,
Ms. Farnsworth?”

“This proves what I have said repeatedly. We
must shut down the research programs. There has been very little
progress in the last five years, since the fertility and metabolism
issues were solved; the virtue effect has proven itself
uncrackable. And the high-tech weapons programs are a waste of
resources and cost countless lives as they provoke the Big Three to
these horrifying actions. We must bide our time. Our projections
show that the Plague will eventually reach everyone. If nothing
else, we will outlive our opponents.”

“Thank you.” He pressed another button, to
hear from a more moderate source. “Go ahead, Mr. Ramirez.”

“Thank you Mr. Chairman. We are not
responsible for the evil of the UGNA, the Soviets or the Chinese.
But what are we doing to curb these leaks and security breaches? If
there were none, they would have no reason to target facilities,
real or imagined, with weapons of mass destruction. I cite
Antigua.”

Antigua had been incinerated eight years ago,
before the Nuclear Concord agreement that ended atomic weapon use,
apparently because of a mere rumor of a nonexistent Free Community
research facility.

Markis pressed the speaking key.
“Unfortunately the virtue effect does not preclude simple
foolishness and gossip. It’s human nature. We cannot and will not
use heavy-handed tactics like our opponents to try to control
leaks. That’s an impossible and self-destructive task. All of the
Free Communities must implement their security plans in their own
way. Next?”

The debate carried on for forty-five minutes;
complaints and recriminations, discussion points and politesse back
and forth. The only difference between this and a pre-Plague
political body is that occasionally someone’s mind was changed by
logic and common sense. And they were more or less civil. And there
were no filibusters allowed. He supposed it was an improvement.

When the requests for the floor finally died
down, Chairman Markis addressed them. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have
an announcement that may provide some hope. As you know, the
Central American arena has proven the UG’s current quagmire. Since
seizing everything south to Panama, the drug cartels, the Maoist
guerillas, the independence movements, and the simple intractable
poverty consumes their resources at an alarming rate. The
employment of the Security Service Psychos has exacerbated the
situation for them exponentially, a tremendous blunder. Death squad
tactics and gratuitous atrocities have turned the population
against them.”

“The Free Communities have survived, even
prevailed in Africa, South America and Australia, and the Neutral
States have stabilized Europe, Southwest Asia, the Middle East, and
the Indian subcontinent, but the situation has become stalemated.
Millions of people languish in concentration camps, enslaved and
starving. They don’t even have the benefit of the updates in the
virus that have eliminated the hunger and the fertility issues. Our
Armed Forces commandos have rescued as many as we can. But I am
here now to tell you we have a chance to change the balance of
power, to break the stranglehold of tyranny for millions.”

He checked his watch. They should be boarding
the submarine just about now. Markis continued.

“I can now tell you that our intelligence
service is on the verge of scoring a tremendous success. We have
suborned a high-ranking official in the UGNA, an official so high
that he ranks near the Triumvir-Presidents themselves. He has
provided us with a data dump of the UGNA strategic targeting and
activation codes. In a matter of hours, we will be able to deploy
our latest cyber weapons to take control of, and selectively launch
their own ballistic and cruise missiles, regardless of warhead, at
targets of our choosing.”

Almost every picture on the screen flashed
with a request for the floor; he had expected that, and he ignored
them. “Please, let me finish, then everyone will have a chance to
speak. Perhaps I can answer some of your questions right away.”

“I have not gone mad, nor have our
intelligence specialists. No one will be launching these weapons
against human targets. But in the narrow window we expect to have
before the UG regains control of their arsenal, we intend to
retarget and launch as many missiles as possible, to strike in
harmless, empty places. These weapons are expensive, and they are
deadly; if we can expend hundreds or even thousands of them, we can
substantially reduce our vulnerability. There will be no nuclear
detonations. We do not have the Permissive Action Link codes to
activate the weapons themselves. But in one stroke we might just
destroy more than half their strategic weapons.”

Now if they’ll just believe this necessary
lie.

Larry Nightingale rolled over in the gentle
morning’s light. He gazed for a time at the perfect curve of his
wife Shawna’s waist and hips hiding under satin sheets. He wondered
how he could ever have been so lucky, and sent a prayer of thanks
skyward. His Baptist faith, never very strong, had taken a beating
for a while. Now, despite the struggles he saw miracles everywhere,
mostly in the love of a woman he knew was far too good for him.