Lord Banshee- Fairy Dust

by Russell O Redman

  “I was on the Moon at the time, but every doctor in ExA was warned about the toxin and the odd means of deployment. Once the bug had been added to the database we never saw them again and assumed the experiment had been considered a failure. We may have been wrong. Perhaps it was merely a proof of principle.

  “Do you know if the current bugs have ever clumped together before? With a fleet of mysterious weapons due to arrive in a few days, with all the Belter ships scrambling to leave, and with mysterious bugs starting to self-assemble just now, I am starting to believe that you are not as crazy as Sergei suggests. I think it might be important to find out if your bugs contain the chemical ingredients to generate something toxic, perhaps an airborne nerve agent. It would only need to be effective for a few days while the presumed Martian fleet to move into position.”

  I was shaking my head with a horrible, sinking feeling. “I have never seen them clump before today, and I have been finding them for almost a week. Do you know if the water-bugs were manufactured on Mars? They sound very sophisticated for the Martian industrial system.”

  He replied, “We believed at that time that they had been created on the Earth, partly because we never heard about them again. The Governor could protect himself and his staff inside the compound from the toxin long enough to clean the pipes, but the Martian population would have been devastated if they had been dumped into the civic water supplies. From all I have heard of them, it is hard to imagine one of the factions having such a weapon without using it.”

  Marin drifted over. “Doctor Tran, you are disturbing my patient, although he seems to be taking it better than before.”

  “He is disturbing me with very good reason, and we urgently need to talk to Raul before he gives the engineers their final instructions. After that, perhaps you two could knock heads about how we might handle a toxic gas attack through the air vents during the soiree.”

  I spotted Raul heading for the door to talk to the eng. I dragged the two doctors over to explain their new concerns about self-assembling bug that might contain water or air borne toxins. We emphasized to the eng the importance of timely updates as he made progress.

  Since it suddenly seemed important, I pointed out to Marin the stack of new armoured suits beside the door, and started fishing out the four suits for the doctors. Each suit was custom fitted to its owner, but there were no external markings to distinguish them, only a service ID code printed inside the collar. I recognized my own code as an MI agent, but each of us would have to identify our suits in person. We were going to have to store the suits carefully, so we could grab the correct one quickly in an emergency. Once suited up, we were going to be almost anonymous, distinguished only by our body shape.

  I had considered stuffing them into the air ducts to help block the migration of bugs, but the bugs would surely migrate around them and keeping the doctors alive through a gas attack took priority. We distributed the four suits, and I fetched the one for Leilani.

  When Doctor Tran came back, the seven of us with suits gathered in a corner and discussed the wisdom of continuing with the soiree in the face of a possible gas attack. We would have all the ministers, the entire team, the Captain and most of his senior officers all in the same room. It would make a significant target if an enemy agent knew it was happening. On the other hand, the Mao had already removed the people whose loyalty was suspect. Operatives external to the ship could not have known about a party organized less than two hours before.

  We still had no idea what the bugs were intended to do. Their purpose might still be to poison our water supply, and were being found in the air ducts only because they had been cleaned out everywhere else. They might also be assembling into listening devices, or small bombs, or music boxes. There was a remote chance that MI had deployed the bugs in a poorly timed test of our defences. When fully assembled, they might become a toy castle that popped up a flag saying “Gotcha”.

  The deciding points were that we had no idea how many of them were in the ducts, nor whether they had already assembled themselves into fully operational units elsewhere in the ship. The ministers and senior officers were equally at risk wherever they were in the ship. At least here they would have four doctors alerted to possible trouble standing next to their suits. The soiree would go ahead and we would spend the time worrying privately.

  Then it was time for exercise, so everyone trooped across the hall and began our circuits of the machines. Marin came over and watched me for a while, then gave me a new circuit that seemed to combine yoga with dance moves. It was less stressful than my normal circuit, especially for the bones in my arms and legs, which were healing rapidly but still ached under load. The whole time she scolded me for not telling her about my heart surgery, but without the fire I was coming to expect. As she turned away to start her own routine, she added that she and Toyami had discussed my early years in CI with Leilani. Given my background, she was almost willing to forgive me for being a jerk. My case would be improved if I could still find a way for her to retire to her lucrative practice in Paris. I refrained from saying I was sorry, because I was not the one who would determine her future employment.

  About half way through the second circuit, we got a message from the eng. He had disassembled the first few bugs we had given them and knew what they contained: glue. A very versatile glue, capable of sticking to almost any surface in the ship, including the tiny ceramic plates that comprised the surface of our armoured suits, but glue and not the ingredients for a nerve toxin. He finished off, “If these are typical, we can probably stop worrying about gas attacks. I am wondering how to weaponize tiny, mobile drops of glue. They are flammable, but not explosive unless they are confined with an oxidizer. If they are not in your lungs, they are hardly even toxic. They could do a good job sticking your lips or fingers together.”

  I thought about that for two seconds and replied, “They can stop any sliding contact, like hinges, motors, fans, door latches. Or build walls to block the flow of water, air, coolant, or lubricant. Or create mechanical stops where none existed before. Can they get past the airlocks into the weapon bays?”

  He replied, “Right, I will call in some more help and get on it. And I had better warn the Cap what we are working on.”

  I continued with my circuit, not sure whether to feel reassured or doomed. Raul joined me on an adjacent machine. He mused, “I wonder how many of these things exist on the Mao? There cannot have been too many coming aboard because they have been checking for contraband for the last couple of days. Unless they have been around for longer than we were aware. Can they be breeding somewhere? Could the first thing they made have been a factory?”

  “Ummm, yes. What are they made of?”

  “I ran a simple scan before I sent the package away. Mostly carbon and organic materials, which is part of why they were so hard to detect. Tiny traces of metals... Crap!”

  We looked at each other. “Bio-waste recycling,” we said together.

  Raul fired off another message to the eng, “Have your people look in the bio-waste recycling, especially to see if anyone has noticed reduced flow through the system recently. They may have built themselves a factory hidden in the soup.”

  The eng called back almost immediately, “I will get a team looking. I am upgrading my message to the Captain to class this as a clandestine assault. I am glad you warned me about the blighters clumping together to make more dangerous objects. We have been tossing all the ones we found into a box. Before I opened the box, I thought to slip it into a bomb-proof autolab with robotic manipulators. Glad I did, because it exploded when I opened the lid and sprayed a flaming glue mixture all over the inside of the autolab. I am not sure we will ever be able to open the autolab again. We might have to use it as a gunnery target.

  “It does seem likely that there is more than one kind. Perhaps the casing includes an oxidizer. I will run a more complete chemical test when I get more samples.”

  Raul fired back, “If we strapped
a small sensor implant like we have in our armour onto a tiny drone, could we send it through the air ducts to locate where they are?”

  The eng replied, “Yes, and I have a couple of apprentices who need a project. I will sic them on it. Pleasure doing business with you guys!”

  Two more rounds of the circuit, just as I was working up a sweat, Captain Wang appeared at the door of the exercise room. He was accompanied by a squad of marines and looked very cross. “Why will none of you answer your comm units? I have reports from my engineering staff from all over the ship about jammed missile racks, broken radar units, plugged water dispensers, broken lifts. Even the ship-to-ship laser comm has failed because they cannot target the laser on other ships. About the only things that are still working are the kitchens and latrines.”

  Raul and I looked at each other, both suppressing a giggle that made Wang even more angry.

  “I am sorry, Captain.” I said, as Raul choked. “Private joke, but what you say makes perfect sense. The little black bugs we have been finding lately are filled with glue, and they are literally gluing all the moving parts of the ship to each other. Our guess is that there is a factory manufacturing new glue bugs down in the bio-waste recycling system. Whomever designed the system would not want to choke off their own feedstock, so the kitchens and latrines are the two systems that would still be operative.”

  Then I sobered up, fast. “Except you should have known about that already. Raul and I, as well as the engineer who was working with us, have been sending you a string of messages to keep you up to date on what was happening. There is never just one thing wrong, is there? Captain, the threat level of those bugs has been raised to severe almost everywhere except in MI, so the TDF may have been infiltrated by these bugs without ever realizing that they were dangerous. I warned our marine guards that the threat level had not been propagated and asked them to pass a more appropriate level for use in their personal databases through personal contact. I did not pass that message directly to you because I was not sure whether MI was merely negligent in not raising the threat level, or whether it might have been compromised. Since the ship is being sabotaged by the bugs and communications related to that attack within the ship are being blocked, I think the evidence is strong that MI has been compromised. I am afraid we need to have a serious talk with the MI personnel on the ship.”

  Wang glanced over to his marines, who nodded and confirmed that they had received the new threat assessment through the marine grapevine. Wang opined that his sailors also needed that assessment, starting with himself and then his senior officers, rather than with the engineers. He also suggested that my assessment was now outdated and should be modified:

  threat: extreme

  purpose: sabotage, espionage, dispersal of adhesives, incendiaries, and toxic fluids

  These at least we could be sure were possible from what we already had encountered. The engineers would probably discover other modes of attack if the plague could not be stopped quickly. He then ordered the arrest of the three shipboard MI agents, but then paused and wondered out loud who would be qualified to interrogate them.

  I pointed out somewhat reluctantly that General Molongo, Agent Pinter and myself were all officially members of MI with sufficient rank to question the shipboard agents, although none of us were familiar with current MI methods or equipment except as users. The other agents in our team were experienced with interrogation and could assist a senior MI officer if sworn to an appropriate level of secrecy. I also wondered how we could transmit the severity of this new threat to the rest of the fleet without using transmissions that could be monitored and blocked by MI.

  By now Captain Wang was looking both sick and angry. His ship had almost been neutralized, some, perhaps all, of his security staff turned into enemy agents, and without the inter-ship laser comm there was no obvious way to warn the rest of the fleet that did not pass through MI.

  Finally, he said, “Molongo. He is the only one who can use Council protocols to speak with the rest of the military outside the purview of MI. This is no longer a warning, no longer a bizarre event that could be interpreted in different ways. This is a direct attack on the TDF, and it almost turned my ship into a steel brick. Without being able to deploy our missiles, lasers and rail guns, we would soon be reduced to using the Mao as a battering ram.

  “I am going to ask him to do the interrogation, if you can supply an experienced agent. You two are forbidden to do the questioning because you started the inquiry and are yourselves MI agents, so have multiple conflicts of interest. I wish we had someone from MI Internal Affairs on board. Besides, I need you to talk with the ministers urgently. We are in fact at war, but we still do not know for certain who is the enemy. I doubt that any senior officer outside this ship even knows that much. We are going to have to make some very hard decisions tonight, and your soiree sounds like the perfect cover to get started.”

  It suddenly occurred to me that the room had gone silent. No one was grunting with exertion, no machines were whirling or banging. Everyone has stopped what they were doing and listening as Wang reached his decision.

  Sergei muttered, “A soiree at the commencement of active hostilities. We are fiddling as Rome burns, and this night will be remembered in infamy.” In the silent room, his quiet words almost echoed.

  “Not as bad as that, I hope”, Wang replied. “We all know the real issues at stake. I expect it will be one hell of a party. Now, if you will excuse me, I have traitors to arrest and a ship in crisis.” He swept from the room, sending marines running to every part of the ship. A few minutes later, with our exercise only half complete, the sirens called the entire crew of the ship to battle stations. We were ushered back across the hall into our living/conference/party room and the door was shut and locked.

  2357-03-04 03:00

  Party Planning

  While we had been at exercise, our new dress uniforms had been delivered and sat in a corner out of the way. I was curious about what they looked like, but was far more concerned to get our party preparations redirected to the new mission. I distributed the updated threat assessment to everyone and sent them to scan everything and everyone in the room for bugs of any kind. Surprisingly, the room itself was clear, as were the new uniforms. A few more glue bugs were found in the air ducts, but they were scrapped off and stored in a metal box.

  Then I gathered everyone around and renewed my concern about the five criteria for a successful conclusion of hostilities. Captain Wang was clearly angry and wanted to strike quickly, but was restraining himself because he did not know where to strike. If we gave him false or misleading information, even unwittingly, he might hit an innocent target with a nuclear-tipped missile. It was very likely that Mars was the source of the self-propagating glue bug, ultimately if not proximally, but if we struck at Mars in error, we could start an interplanetary war far worse than the Martian Incursion. If we decided in error that the attack originated with a faction based in the Belt, with the Imperium as the obvious possibility, we might trigger a war with the Belt that everyone would lose.

  For the first time in the long-running conflict with Mars, we needed to focus our attention on justice rather than revenge. We were all agents, trained and experienced in the art of bringing criminals to justice. This was the same game on a larger board. We needed to identify the culprits, contain the damage they were inflicting and expose them to the full rigour of justice, even if we had to invent the system of justice required to do so.

  Especially, we had to be aware that some of the Ministers, unfamiliar with the true cost of war, would want to strike back in anger at any perceived threat. At the risk of exposing ourselves to charges of treason, we must prevent them from acting on that impulse. It was better to lose the war and be subject to a Martian tyranny than to lose the Earth to hatred and be complicit in a genocide.

  I then raised Captain Wang’s request for one of us to assist General Molongo in the interrogation of the MI agents, who might be innoc
ent of the charges against them. It remained possible that the treachery lay entirely outside the Mao, operating remotely inside the ship as part of a larger plot.

  Chandrapati volunteered, explaining, “I am a vegetarian pacifist, but I have interrogated many extremely violent and abusive criminals. I believe I can maintain my equilibrium throughout the interrogation, while extracting the required information. I hold neither a personal grudge, nor an institutional loyalty, to any of the suspects. Also, from what I have heard, I would be extremely uncomfortable at this party. I could only be an outsider. Please accept my service. I believe I am better suited to do this chore than anyone else here.”

  His logic was inescapable, but I still felt disappointed. He would not have been the first celibate, vegetarian, religiously committed spacer. I was sure we could have made him feel welcome and a full participant without violating any of his principles. With a sigh, I agreed that he was the obvious choice for the job.

  Meanwhile, we needed to decide what limits we could or could not tolerate, what orders we would have to disobey. War was upon us and we must decide which higher principles we would commit to following, to our deaths if need be. I personally had tried obedience to duly constituted authority on Mars, and would never again sell my soul to such a devil.