The Orion Plague (2 page)

Donovan raised his hand, like a kid in class.
“We all have them, though. We’s all Edens and we got the
nanovaccine.”

“I know that,” Repeth ground out patiently,
“and I hope to God we don’t have any of those kinds of problems. I
haven’t heard about any. Probably because our vaccine has only one
function, to kill the Demon Plague viruses. The cyber-nano is about
a thousand times stronger, and I think it’s too smart for its own
good. So it’s us or it’s nobody.”

Grusky looked askance at Repeth, then around
at the rest. As the senior man he knew he was responsible for
asking the tough questions. “Ah, Master Sergeant…pardon me, but
I’ve never seen you like this before. I mean, when you took over
and we were training you were one hardass lady, pardon my French,
but everyone knew it was, you know, professional. This…this is
personal. You sure you’re okay?”

She stepped toward him, grabbing his lapels
to drag him to his feet with a growl. He didn’t flinch this time,
didn’t gobble or show any fear. “Jill,” he said quietly, “please.
We want to help you. You know I’ll follow you to hell and back. I
just need to know that you’re all right. That this is you talking
and not some…imbalance. We’ve all seen too many crazies in the last
month.”

Repeth let him go, patting his collar back
smooth. “Sorry, David. You’re right, I am close to the edge. I need
some sleep and some food that didn’t come out of an MRE packet, and
you all deserve to know that I’m not going off half-cocked. When we
go, we’ll all be sane and ready, me included. Assuming everyone is
in?” Suddenly she looked uncertain, leaking vulnerability.

They all nodded, and the relief welled
evident to her face. “All right, then as of now you all report to
me, and I report to Captain LeBrun, and he reports to Colonel
Muzik, and we’re on detached duty.”

“In other words, they’re going to cover for
us, but we’re actually off the reservation.” Grusky smiled
crookedly.

“Something like that.” She resisted the urge
to pat her breast pocket, where a very special piece of paper
rested.

Over the next thirty-six hours Jill Repeth
made her team ready. She drew some military scrip from the
paymaster, ate salad and vegetables and pasta and fresh meat –
expensive, but worth every penny – at the best restaurant that
survived in Fredericksburg. Then she bummed a sleeping pill from
Doc Horton and slept a big black dream-filled slumber, about
fourteen hours long.

She spent the morning talking over plans and
ops, swapping out worn equipment and drawing more. Then she took
her team to lunch and spent more of her pay on healthy food. She
knew they were eating better than almost everyone in the relief
zones, but felt little guilt. They’d been doing far more than their
fair share. That’s what she told her conscience anyway.

Sometimes she frightened herself, when she
saw her drawn face in the latrine mirror or caught herself thinking
about roasting the Professor over a slow fire. It wasn’t the
thoughts that scared her, exactly. It was that she so easily
crushed her own inhibitions.
Next time I see him, I’m going
to
…she didn’t really want to finish the thought, for fear of
what it revealed about her, and about the Eden Plague.
Does this
mean that if the excuse seems powerful enough, conscience is no
obstacle? What about the love of Christ and the presence of the
Holy Spirit within me that I’m supposed to have? Have I been using
the Eden Plague and God as an excuse to do the right thing? And now
I don’t want to do the right thing. I just want to kill the
bastard.

But will I? Or is this just wish-fulfillment
fantasy? What if I rescue Rick first?

And what will Rick think of me now?

She pushed these thoughts out of her mind,
told herself to just do the job.
Be the professional you are,
Jill. Not the cop, no matter what Captain LeBrun wants.

Be the commando. Be
Reaper.

Put aside the last two months, the civil
affairs and the relief and vaccination effort, where every act of
violence was carefully calculated and measured, a cop’s response.
Take back the mantle of the special operator, where you shoot first
and straight, where decisions are easy because everyone in front of
you is an enemy and a target. Put it back on like the cape of a
crusader, a relentless superhero who can get shot and stabbed and
bludgeoned and still come back every time.

To exist within the mission: simple, so
simple.

Not the complex and painful world of reality,
where mothers accept government food to save their children’s lives
but try to refuse their Reaper Plague vaccination for fear of some
wacked-out conspiracy. Where diseased reprobates enslave their
fellow citizens because they have a different color or gender or
because they just think violence and domination by fear is
fun
. Where a tribe of primitive brain-damaged mutes is the
best example of peace and harmony around.

A special operation is simplicity itself
compared to the hell of living without Rick. Why didn’t I see that
before? Why did I take him for granted? Add him to my trophy case,
the perfect guy for me, but change nothing. How many guys have I
spit on for thinking that way? Did I just want a wifey, a Mr. Mom
to stay home and raise my kids? No wonder they think I’m a dyke;
I’m a bad caricature of a man.

And if it didn’t work out, there was always
another one sniffing around, like Swede Gunderson. Fallback
positions. Only there’s nothing behind me. I have no fallback
position.

There’s nowhere to retreat that isn’t made
of Rick.

Is this what Cassandra felt when she lost
Zeke? Dear God, I had no idea. How do people live with things like
this? Love is so damned risky. Even if they don’t betray you
sometime, they might die or be taken, like now. Can I really put up
with a thousand years of this kind of uncertainty?

She grabbed the commando, the
Reaper
,
and wrapped it tight around her again, stuffing her fears and her
doubts down where they belonged.
If I can’t put all that aside,
just like I’ve told many troops before, just FIDO, forget it and
drive on, then I don’t deserve these stripes.

So she buckled down and prepped her team, ate
again, took a hot shower and went to bed early, setting her watch
for 0430.

When it beeped, she rolled out of bed and
dressed automatically, layering outward with clothing, under-armor,
armor, tactical vest, webbing, weapons, integrated squadcomm
system, helmet, fingerless gloves. Over the past few weeks she had
been methodically collecting gear she and her team would need. She
looked at herself for a long moment in the reflection of her room’s
window before she turned off the lamp and picked up the heavy
duffel.

By the dawn’s early light she was once again
cold as ice, sharp as steel, hard as stone.

Rick Johnstone stared at the wall of his
cell. Though the door was unlocked, a cell it remained.
More
like the cell of a body, perhaps; just a machine that performs a
function. That’s me, a device working on other devices.

He ached all over, from no physical cause. As
an Eden his body should be in fine tune, but there were limits to
even that remarkable phage. The mind, though founded on the brain,
had a viewpoint of its own, and right now Rick’s was unhappy.
More than that, my soul and spirit are oppressed. And Jill…I
don’t even know if she’s alive.

He’d worked in Fredericksburg for the
Professor for just a day, fixing some obvious and simple problems
with his headquarters computers before he’d heard the ruckus down
in Old Town. Separated from the other prisoners, he’d missed the
rescue of the male slave laborers.

He’d hoped that whatever force had survived
from Muzik’s battalion would make another attempt. They had to know
the women were still in captivity; by the lewd comments of his
captors he’d deduced how they’d been abused. But too much hope was
unrealistic. Fredericksburg was on its guard and ready.

The next day they’d thrown a bag over his
head and hustled him off in a truck. Mouth taped and hands
shackled, he’d been traded away to men with clipped voices, his
price paid in weapons and ammunition. A short, jolting helicopter
ride later he’d found himself here, at Sept.

That’s what they called it, and he’d heard no
other name for days. Eventually he’d deduced enough to realize it
referred to the project called Septagon Shadow, but by then he’d
been put to work on discrete, compartmented technical projects.

As he stared at the ceiling over his bunk his
mind went automatically to the latest challenge he’d been set. A
natural problem-solver, Rick could no more stop thinking about a
solution than a dog could ignore a bone between his paws.

They know it, too
, he thought.
They
give me good food, I’m not mistreated – but outside of work I can’t
simply talk with someone, read something, or really do anything
except solve their problems. I can work slowly but if I don’t find
their answer I don’t get another task to work on, and I will
eventually lose my mind here.

“Here” was a laboratory complex, a building
with windows too small to squeeze through but large enough to see
the grassland, woods and a glimpse of shoreline.
Rural, near the
Potomac or the Chesapeake, considering the short length of the helo
ride. Someplace secret, and not under the control of the legitimate
US government.
Though they hadn’t said so explicitly, the
uniforms and the vernacular marked the staff as Unionist holdouts.
Like the Nazis who fled to other places and tried to rebuild
cells after World War II, these people still hope to take their
power back. So where’s our Simon Wiesenthal, Lord? Is it too much
to ask it be Jill?

Jackboots stomped in the corridor, three
guards every time. He might entertain fantasies of overpowering one
or even two guards, but not three. His door slid back and the one
he thought of as Pancho for his square jaw, drooping moustaches and
swarthy face waved him out into the corridor.
One minor
improvement to these Nazis – all races welcomed.

Rick rolled off the bed and stuck his feet in
his soft stupid slippers.
At least they keep my feet warm. No
laces, cloth bottom, useless if I reached the outside. Another
clever detail.

The guards handed him off to his minder,
Stanley, at the cafeteria.
Why do they need three guards to get
me to breakfast but only one fat nerd after that? Procedures become
rules become graven in stone, and nobody asks why.
He kept
hoping he could use this fact somehow, but guards were always
nearby, and Stanley refused to talk about anything but work. He
wasn’t cruel, but he was reserved, probably afraid.

They ate breakfast in silence.

From there Stanley passed Rick through the
cafeteria door with his keyed badge and a code, then down a short
hallway to his workroom. Divided into four workstations, the room
gave each man a corner. There was enough space for four
technicians, no more, no less. Once he arrived, at least two of the
employees were always in the room with him. One could take a break,
but never two.

And these minders were not stupid guards.
They were technicians, engineers and computer scientists almost as
talented as he was, so fooling them on something tech-related was
difficult.

Not to say he wasn’t working on it; in fact,
he had several snippets of code embedded in the network, hidden
subroutines lurking, waiting to be activated, or gathering
information in trapdoor files. Anything one person could devise,
another could circumvent, and they did not seem to realize just who
they had sharing the network with them.

I wonder how much access they would give me
if they knew my sole job for the last five or six years has been
designing network cyber-attacks on the Big Three.

Hacking United Russia had been easy, what he
could reach; their solution to intrusion was to keep their most
important networks completely separate, unconnected and physically
protected. It worked, but made them inefficient.

The North American Union was a harder target,
willing to fight a war of cyber-blades, hacker bots, worms and
viruses versus ICE, the name for Intrusion Countermeasure
Electronics, defensive security software. It was an entertaining,
clean kind of war, most of the time.

Greater China was another matter. Their ICE
was almost as good as the North Americans, but unlike them Beijing
had no compunction about attacking back, even with lethal means.
Quite a few of Rick’s colleagues had been assassinated by the
Chinese or their proxies early in the Second Cold War, before
Colonel Spooky Nguyen had put a stop to them by equally effective
countertactics. The Free Communities’ prisons were full of Chinese
spies and assassins.

Today in the virtual dungeon he worked on a
relatively benign subroutine, a piece of control software that
helped translate nerve impulses from humans to servomechanisms.
Rick had no way of knowing for sure that it would be used for
sinister purposes – it was exactly the type of thing that could be
put to use to control prosthetics, or teleoperated mining machines,
or even play games, but it could also be used to steer combat
drones or control implanted bionic augmentations. It was this
latter that he considered the most likely possibility. He’d heard a
few things about the Shadow cyborgs these people built.

What should I do to this piece of
software?
He wondered.
I’d hate to be the cause of anyone’s
injury or death if it does get used for innocent purposes. But I
have to believe that work like that would not need to be done in
secret, by pampered slaves like me. I have to put aside my doubts
and go with the most likely explanation. That’s what Mom would say,
Occam’s Razor. And Jill would say, “Better to do something and be
wrong than to do nothing.” What would DJ say? “Do the right thing,
even if you’re afraid; bravery isn’t lack of fear, it’s facing your
terror down and beating it”.