Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Vasquez tilted his head briefly in agreement as he watched the news feed, where an elegantly dressed woman was standing in front of a large display portraying footage of the engagement between the two massive warships.

  ‘… reports indicate that at least twelve salvos were exchanged between Titan and the Aleeyan warship before Titan was forced to disengage and flee the fight, leaving the colony vessel Icarus behind. Witnesses from the mining platform who had been evacuated just before the battle confirmed that Titan could not have won the fight and that rather than a retreat, a tactical re-positioning ready to counter the new threat was Admiral Marshall’s plan.’

  ‘And not that he was caught with his pants down and his balls out,’ Vasquez muttered to himself. ‘He could have held the line a little further forward.’

  ‘Says Captain Vasquez the Valiant here,’ somebody muttered to a ripple of chuckles.

  ‘Yo shut your face,’ Vasquez snapped across at them. ‘Ain’t no small thing fallin’ back from a battle. It’ll encourage the Aleeyans to advance.’

  Allen frowned thoughtfully as he watched the news feed.

  ‘Twelve ships,’ he said. ‘That’s not much of an attacking force. CSS can put fifty ships out there in a couple of hours, they’re probably already moving.’

  As if in reply, the news anchor gestured to a new image of warships moving out of Polaris Station.

  ‘The CSS has already launched a repelling fleet numbering forty eight battleships, cruisers, frigates and supply ships from Polaris Station, Saturn. It is reported by CSS Headquarters that the fleet will be in position to confront the Aleeyan threat within two hours, and we have unconfirmed reports that the crew of Icarus were reported dead upon discovery by CSS Marines after being infected by an unknown virus that may be a variant of the plague itself. We’ll have more reports as soon as they come in.’

  ‘How the hell did they know that already?’ Allen uttered in amazement.

  ‘You’ve never served aboard a CSS warship,’ Vasquez replied. ‘Ain’t no such thing as a secret these days, no matter what they try to say. If there’s media aboard, somebody will talk or be overheard.’

  Allen peered at the screen as the reports kept coming in. ‘The Aleeyans don’t make their play soon, they’ll get fried by the fleet when it arrives. What are they waiting for?’

  Vasquez also frowned. ‘Beats me bro’, it doesn’t make much sense unless they’re already thinking that the plague is in place and they’re just here to watch the fireworks.’

  ‘Or maybe to draw the fleet out of the solar system,’ Allen said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Vasquez replied. ‘This stuff’s all out of our league. All I want to do is pin down the sons of bitches distributing that drug, Shiver, and leaving people down here exposed to the plague. Who knows how many there could be?’

  Allen thought for a moment and then abruptly launched himself from his seat as he turned to one of the holodisplays nearby and barked an order to the precinct computer.

  ‘Data, extract all hospital admissions for sufferers of rapid onset fevers over the past seven days.’

  The computer screen flickered as data spilled across it and the monotone female voice spoke.

  ‘Admission records for all New Washington hospitals with fever symptoms: Day One, three admissions. Day Two, seventeen admissions. Day Three, eight six admissions. Day Four, three hundred twelve submissions. Day Five…

  As the voice went on and the numbers increased with each passing day, Allen turned to Vasquez, whose tanned skin seemed to have turned a shade paler.

  ‘Foxx wasn’t the first,’ Allen said.

  ‘This thing’s already in motion,’ Vasquez confirmed.

  ‘Day Seven, twelve hundred nineteen admissions and counting.’

  Allen whirled and rushed toward the captain’s office, but before he could even reach it Captain Forrester burst out.

  ‘Quaranatine protocol immediately!’ he roared, his voice booming across the office. ‘The media’s started a frenzy, city’s in shutdown and the plague is back! Seal the building!’

  Before either Vasquez or Allen could respond, Forrester was alongside them.

  ‘Viggo Polt’s body was just found,’ he said. ‘The escort just got hit hard on its way to the dock, two officers wounded.’

  ‘He was in protective custody, armed escort!’ Vasquez uttered in disbelief. ‘How did they even know where he was?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Forrester replied, ‘but the escort got slowed down in the rush created by the media reports. Half the city is trying to leave the station, and it made them a sitting target. All we got is a sketchy image of the craft used in the hit.’

  Forrester handed them an electrosheet with an image of a black cruiser, maybe a Celice, captured as it fled the scene of the attack. Alongside it was another of the vehicle in which Viggo Polt had been, riddled with plasma blasts, Viggo’s lifeless corpse staring accusingly out of the shattered interior at Vasquez and Allen.

  ‘Find the vehicle,’ Forrester ordered them. ‘Whatever it takes.’

  ***

  XXXVI

  CSS Headquarters,

  New York City

  The news came in from the stations almost simultaneously, report after report that filled the various sections of the giant holodisplay that dominated the conference room. At the head of the table Director General Ceyron hung his head slowly, his eyes closed as though he had lost consciousness as his hands clasped together to catch his forehead in freefall.

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in their seats, each of them scanning the countless reports before them as an aide collated and distilled the massed reports and delivered them in a more digestible manner.

  ‘Plague victims are being admitted under quarantine protocols in New Chicago, New Washington, New Delhi, Lunar Four and Polaris itself,’ he said. ‘Further outbreaks are suspected on the surface in Sydney and Berlin but are yet to be confirmed. In total, at least thirty thousand individuals are believed to be carrying or infected by the plague.’

  Ceyron dragged his hands down his face. ‘How can this have happened?’

  ‘Subterfuge,’ the aide, a young man named Miles, replied. ‘The plague suffered by the victims is the same strain that infected mankind centuries ago, although early reports suggest that it is acting faster than previous incarnations. It is our immunity to it that has been neutralized, and then the infection passed on by close contact with others. The source of the infection appears to be users of the popular street drug Shiver, which has been modified to attack the immune system, thus opening the door to reinfection by plague.’

  Ceyron looked at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. ‘Recommendations, gentlemen?’

  The Chief of the Army spoke first.

  ‘Global quarantine protocol and immobilization of the populace at large both on the surface and above it. Containment is key now. We can assume that if thirty thousand or so cases are confirmed, then at least three times that number are carrying but undiagnosed.’

  The Chief of the Fleet spoke up, an elderly retired Rear-Admiral standing in for Marshall.

  ‘The fleet is more isolated than the general population and should still be able to perform their duties, but it is inevitable that the infection will reach them eventually. I would advise pressing on with a full and complete engagement with the Aleeyan fleet and attempting to not just annihilate them, but also to capture enough of them that we might learn of how they did this and how to put a stop to it.’

  The Chief of the Marines was next, a square-jawed man with a thick neck and shoulders like a harbor wall.

  ‘I concur with all opinions so far. We can’t afford to be complacent in any way with this crisis. Containment and destruction of the enemy and a scientific analysis of the attack in order to procure an effective vaccine are priorities. If we fail and we are sufficiently weakened, then Aleeyans are sure to seize upon the initiative and invade. Our fleet is superior but can do little if the crew is incapacitated and thus cannot m
an their stations.’

  Director General Ceyron listened to the opinions of his team, and then the opinions of world leaders from around the globe, as well as from the governors of a half dozen stricken stations now struggling to contain both the spread of the contagion and the panic of their countless millions of citizens in the face of the return of a plague and an imminent Aleeyan attack.

  ‘We’re shut down and unable to contain the situation,’ the governor of New Chicago lamented from orbit. ‘I’m one step away from martial law here but I don’t have the manpower to enforce it. We’ll have riots within a couple of hours if this isn’t resolved, and we all know that if that happens then anarchy is only a step away. We’re undermanned, under-equipped and we don’t have the resources to fight a sustained rise in criminal activity alongside the public’s need to escape the contagion.’

  The Chief of the Fleet stood up. ‘Governor, are you telling us that you’re unable to control your city?’

  The governor’s response was as direct as it was honest.

  ‘Yes, sir, that is correct. If this situation gets truly out of control, my office and I will have no option but to abandon the city and take up residence in my personal transport in orbit until the crisis is resolved. It is likely that the police force will also be powerless to prevent a city-wide escalation of violence and civil disobedience. My apologies, sirs, but there it is.’

  The sound of sirens echoed from the orbital city to the conference room, the governor looking up to somebody out of sight for a moment before he nodded urgently and addressed the director general directly.

  ‘I must go,’ he said. ‘Things are already escalating here.’

  ‘Go,’ Ceyron insisted, ‘and do not risk your lives if the situation becomes untenable. Get out of the city and meet the other governors at the rendezvous point before making your way back down here. Good luck, governor.’

  The governor’s link shut off and Ceyron sagged back into his seat and rubbed his temples wearily.

  ‘The situation is deteriorating faster than we can control,’ the Chief of the Fleet said. ‘We have no option but to exercise the complete shutdown of the system before the infection spreads faster than the panic.’

  ‘We cannot countenance abandoning the cities,’ Ceyron insisted. ‘There are millions of people living aboard them and we would be dooming them to death!’

  ‘There are millions outside of the cities,’ the Chief of the Marines pointed out with characteristic soulless logic. ‘Not shutting the cities down would condemn them to death also.’

  Ceyron seemed to shrink beneath the weight of his burden of responsibility, his gray eyes flicking this way and that as he sought some way out, some solution to a crisis that had no true solution and that was already far and away beyond his control.

  ‘What news of the fleet?’ he asked.

  The Chief of the Fleet glanced at his holoscreen. ‘The fleet has just made the leap into super-luminal. They’ll be in position to engage the enemy within twenty minutes. They do not yet have orders to open fire upon arrival, sir. What should they be required to do?’

  Ceyron sat in silence, overwhelmed by the speed with which the crisis had rushed upon them. Just two days ago, none of this had happened. Now, everything had gone to hell and he could think of only one person who could have possibly been the cause of it all.

  ‘Ever since Ironside was reanimated, there has been trouble. His doctor, Schmidt, was behind the infection and now he’s been shut down but the cat is already out of the bag and there’s nothing that we can do to stop it.’ Ceyron straightened in his chair as he sucked in a deep breath of air. ‘This is not a crisis that is the result of our lack of care and duty to our fellow man, it is a crisis created by terrorists intent on destroying our way of life. The Aleeyans and their sympathizers have once again taken a prolonged period of peace and prosperity and turned it into a nightmare, the worst that we could have possibly imagined, and I’m sick of seeing our hard work destroyed by a horde of thugs who can barely call themselves human!’

  Ceyron’s thick fist slammed down onto the table and he looked around at his colleagues.

  ‘I do not wish it, but I see that we have little choice and I do not intend to sit here and let the Aleeyans destroy everything we’ve built, everything we’ve become, just to bring their reign of destruction and suffering here to Earth. This time, we won’t just take the battle back to their fleet. We’ll take it to their home world.’ Ceyron stood and looked down at the Chiefs of Staff. ‘I propose we eliminate their fleet entirely and then advance upon Aleeya.’

  The Chiefs of Staff stood as one in unison with the Director General, their eyes ablaze with righteous conviction and their bodies erect with patriotic fervor.

  ‘I concur.’

  ‘I concur.’

  ‘I concur.’

  The positive responses echoed around the hall as Ceyron saw each and every one of the military staff side with him. All, but one.

  ‘Sir, if I may,’ Ceyron’s aide, Miles, offered somewhat meekly, ‘the Senate will never allow you to take the fleet onto a war footing without their consent and a common vote.’

  Ceyron nodded sombrely.

  ‘I know, but these are extraordinary times and by the time the council has debated this at length with its various members we’ll all be collapsing with the plague ourselves. You do recall, do you not, how fast the plague spread the first time it struck?’

  ‘We still have CSS Titan and her crew,’ the aide added. ‘They may yet find a cure for the plague and bring this sorry episode to a close without a military coup d’etat and…’

  ‘Is that a chance you want to take, Miles?’ Ceyron asked. ‘You have family, do you not?’

  Miles hesitated. ‘A wife, two boys, our parents, yes.’

  ‘And they live in Los Angeles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ceyron flicked an image up onto the holoscreen showing isolated cases of the plague appearing up and down the Los Angeles coastal area. Miles swallowed thickly as Ceyron went on.

  ‘We wait for the council to perhaps decide to support our strike and we wait for the fleet to perhaps find a miracle cure before the orbital cities collapse into anarchy, or we strike now while we still can and eradicate the Aleeyans while our own scientists continue to work on a new vaccine here on Earth. It’s a simple gamble Miles, for us all, for all our families – do we wait, or do we act?’

  Miles stared at the image of Los Angeles, and Ceyron knew that his faithful aide could not object any longer. No human being really could.

  Ceyron turned to his Chiefs of Staff.

  ‘Mobilize the fleet,’ he ordered. ‘Blockade the orbital cities and ensure that nothing and nobody enters or leaves any of them.’

  The senior military figures leaped into action and Ceyron sank back into his chair and dragged a hand down his face.

  ***

  XXXVII

  Aleeyan Warship Wrath

  Nathan peered at Havok suspiciously. ‘You came here to stop the plague?’

  Although he didn’t believe a word of it, Nathan could not abandon the hope that somewhere behind Havok’s aggressive appearance and his people’s warlike nature there might reside a shred of the humanity they shared, that all human beings shared.

  ‘Yes, we came here to stop the plague,’ Havok repeated.

  ‘With a massive war fleet.’

  ‘Walking straight into the Solar System alone or unarmed wouldn’t have done us much good now, would it,’ Havok pointed out. ‘The humans have a habit of shooting first and asking questions later.’

  ‘While the Aleeyans prefer to chat and make friends?’ Nathan challenged.

  ‘We fight,’ Havok growled, ‘but only when provoked. Your tendency to believe everything that your human friends have told you only belies the human character that we Aleeyans have tried hard to leave behind.’

  ‘There must be diplomatic channels,’ Nathan suggested, ‘a means of warning CSS that…’

&
nbsp; ‘They shut off diplomatic contact after the last war,’ Havok interrupted.

  Nathan looked around the bridge at the other warriors. ‘And you think that these guys are behind you on your valiant mission of mercy? They tried to kill me the moment they found me.’

  ‘Old habits die hard,’ Havok shrugged, his sharp teeth bright white against his leathery skin. ‘But they too have a motivation for seeing this plague disappear as fast as possible.’

  ‘Yeah, what’s that then?’

  Havok leaned closer to Nathan. ‘As you have become fond of pointing out, we share the same ancestry. If the drug Shiver can be manipulated to expose humans to The Falling, then it can be used to expose us too.’

  Nathan stared at Havok for a moment. ‘You’re not immune?’

  ‘To The Falling? Yes, just like humans. But that immunity is only based on the same vaccinations that saved humanity. Without it, we’ll be as dead as you.’

  Nathan had not considered the possibility that a plague lethal to humans might also wipe out the Aleeyans too if it got loose.

  ‘The police I was working with, they thought that Aleeyan sympathizers were responsible for bringing the modified Shiver into the population. There were even terrorist cells believed to be operating inside New Chicago and New Washington, drug runners selling their gear to vagrants.’

  ‘People believe what they want to believe,’ Havok said, ‘or what they’ve been conditioned to believe. I cannot say whether sympathizers for our cause have been selling modified Shiver on the streets of your cities because I haven’t been there. What I can tell you is that we’re not responsible, and that means the source of the new plague must have come from within your own people.’

  Nathan shook his head.

  ‘That’s not possible. Everybody I’ve met so far is terrified of The Falling, regardless of whether they’re immune or not and with good reason.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate the human capacity for betrayal and deceit,’ Havok warned. ‘How could you know for sure whether the source of the drug was Aleeya? We could probably grow the stuff and sell it too, but as I said, any infection that can strike humans down could also annihilate us – what would be the point of creating something that’s as dangerous to us as it would be to you?’