Radiant Dawn

by Cody Goodfellow

  "Not that they were undeserving, we were told. Along with the cows and the pigs and the chickens and the chimps, they staked out twelve military prisoners, including some men from Vietnam who'd been caged up in the States. Men who defected, and radioed our boys into ambushes in the jungle. They were still listed as MIA, and the Pentagon just never had the stones to execute them. They were Special Forces boys like yourself. They managed never to find their way back from Vietnam, and were only picked up in 1978. The things they supposedly did over there made the Khmer Rouge look like the Salvation Army. They actually told us that we were to look at it as a military execution, nothing more."

  Storch's teeth clicked together on the end of his tongue. Spike Team Texas. What was wrong with him, he'd gotten from them. And what they were, they'd become because of RADIANT.

  "In March of 1984, they set up the prisoners and the barnyard exhibit on one of the few atolls in the South Pacific that the Army didn't nuke in the forties, and they fired it up. Even in broad daylight, it was some show.

  White light poured down from the sky like the hand of God, but I never saw anything look so wrong as it did. And it worked. All twelve subjects bloomed into glorious terminal cancer inside of a day. They congratulated us, that day. Told us we would go down in history as the men who stuffed the nuclear genie back in the bottle.

  "Then things went wrong. They lost contact with the satellite. And three of the subjects' cancers just kept on growing—but they never died.

  "What happened next is one of those classic examples of government oversight. Any one person would probably have seen through the whole thing right then, but no one person was looking. I didn't see it myself, even though I was sick to death of myself for going along with it."

  "What happened?"

  "The satellite reported a critical failure in its heat exchangers and burned up. That Keitel had written the on-board computer's software and designed the lens array himself only convinced them of his incompetence. So they chalked it up to experience, fired Keitel, reassigned us, buried the budget expenses in toilet seats and coffee makers, and had Keitel's private plane shot down over the South Pacific that evening. That was when we walked."

  "You quit the defense service."

  "We couldn't walk away entirely, of course. If you run, you make it easier for them to get you. No, we all went into the private sector, and very visibly, very quietly, worked on very boring research for a year. Then, one by one, we died. On the side, we began to pool our resources; initially, for our own defense, but we saw that we couldn't just hide our heads. We'd helped to perpetrate a great evil, and we owed it to our children, and to the people in whose name we'd created the damned thing, to make sure it never happened again.

  "We kept in touch with a few people who stayed inside, both military and scientists. They were budgeted to build a thirty megawatt chemical laser for space-based missile defense, but they were all really working on a new prototype of Keitel's satellite. They couldn't duplicate whatever he'd done to the lens, though, and it melted down or exploded every time they tested it. They finally built one that worked, or at least our friends said it would, and they tried to deploy it in January of 1986. They didn't take our threats seriously. They left us no choice."

  "Go fuck yourself. You say you blew up the Challenger?" When neither of them answered, Storch figured they were waiting for him to get over it. Clearly, every man in the Mission was insane. So be it. "So that was the end of it, then."

  "We thought so. We parted ways with the government, went underground to monitor them should they try to build another one, or anything like it, ever again. We left the United States. We sold noncritical weapons secrets to the Soviets up until they collapsed, and to the Israelis and France afterwards. We financed the development of the softkill arsenal we'd proposed to the DoD ten years before, and we made it work. For thirteen long years, we thought we'd won, with our flush of grim triumph and harmless war toys that would end senseless killing forever. Then, about six months ago, we intercepted a signal from earth to a location in space where no satellites were supposed to be. It was a stream of numbers, preceded by the password activating RADIANT's CPU."

  "It was still up there all this time, and nobody saw it?"

  "Who knows? A lot of detritus floating around up there. We'd coated the outer hull with the polymer they used on the F117 with, and if it wasn't transmitting, it wouldn't show up unless somebody bumped into it. Perhaps it really did burn up, and he launched a new one. God knows it's cheap enough to do, now. Whatever, RADIANT went active again, and Keitel, or Keogh, as he calls himself now, was reprogramming it."

  "To do what?" Clearly, Storch was supposed to ask questions, but Armitage wouldn't be rushed to answer them. He felt as if he were listening to a man confess in his sleep, and wondered if Armitage even knew to whom he was speaking anymore.

  "The transmission went almost continuously for two weeks, but trying to trace the signal got us nowhere. The uplink changed every couple of hours; they were hacking dishes all around the world, whenever it stopped transmitting for its owners, it would pick up Keogh's signal and pass it on. We tried to splice in a virus to get it to self-destruct or at least reveal its position, but we couldn't do that, either. The School Of Night worked on cracking intercepted bits of the stream, and narrowed it down to a four variable system of base pairs—a genetic sequence.

  "We followed the signal upstream through dozens of bounces throughout the national phone system, and, just ten days ago, we traced it to the Radiant Dawn Hospice Village in Inyo County. But we were too late. The thing went off just eight days ago over the village."

  "That's stupid as hell! Why would they zap themselves?"

  Wittrock broke in. "Haven't you been listening? As Quesada, he rounded up a group of human guinea pigs and bred them while exposing them to radiation. As Keitel, he refined the process to offer it to the government, the only people rich enough and bloody-minded enough to build it for him. Then he arranged for it to lose itself, and let them think they'd killed him. He resurfaced as Keogh and set up a hospice for terminal cancer patients, because the radiation reacts with pre-existing cancerous cells. They don't kill the host; they become the host, rebuild it, replace it. He's taken the children from Radiant Dawn's first incarnation and continued to breed them under heavy radiation all these years, searching for some kind of beneficial mutation, and he found it six months ago. He fed the results of his eugenics experiments into the satellite and used it to irradiate the hospice. It's not a destructive weapon, anymore. It's far more dangerous than that. It's a way to change humans into cancer."

  Storch's mind reeled. The last piece of the puzzle—the one they apparently didn't have, because they never spoke to Sperling—floated just out of his grasp. Quesada didn't just breed his followers, he bred with them, so any result of the experiment would be his own offspring, the DNA sequence would be, at least in part, his DNA. None of it added up, so the piece drifted away on a wave of incredulity.

  "That's who you're fighting," Storch said, hoping he'd come to some ground of understanding. "These…new people."

  "We always joked," Armitage said, "that if we did blow up the world, we'd only be clearing the way for something better to make a go of it. All this fuss between races over who were the chosen people, when it was clear the cockroaches were really God's favorites. But this…this isn't evolution. This isn't God's plan."

  "So these—mutants?—have to go." That's what the napalm is for, and the drilling, that's why everyone here looks sick to his stomach. They were preparing to wage a campaign of genocide.

  "The government won't help us—can't help us—for fear of exposure, even if they could accept it. We're all alone against them."

  Storch thought about what Spike Team Texas had done to his life. He thought about what he'd hoped to achieve in the Army, and what he'd tried to forget in Death Valley. He thought about his father, who, being a career soldier and insane, would've instantly understood. "I want to go,"
he said.

  Major Bangs was waiting at the door when Storch came out. Even the low light of the corridors outside the computer vault was blinding, but he stared into a bulb for a minute until he could see clearly again. He was so tired that if he ate, he'd fall asleep sitting up, but he wasn't hungry, and his mind wouldn't settle down. He wanted to go sit and think, to try to sort everything everyone had told him into something that jibed with what he'd seen. As he threaded his way back to his cell, he felt Bangs's eyes on him.

  "You believe any of that shit?" Bangs asked out of the side of his mouth, lower than a whisper, as if someone were eavesdropping. In this place, someone probably was.

  "What shit? About the Challenger?"

  "No, about the satellite. About the government not knowing about it."

  In the last week, Storch had quickly learned to believe whatever he was told, no matter how ridiculous it seemed. He had become a soldier again. But it was fast becoming clear that every officer in this little army was crazier than his dad. "I've seen a lot of people killed for something so important nobody seems to know what it is, Major. Tell me what you want me to believe."

  "The government spent time and money on a weapons project with that kind of promise and let it slip out of their hands? For one man to use? They're not quite that stupid, and they're sure as hell aren't that quick to give up."

  He noticed Bangs's eyes, the whites completely visible around his dark-dilated pupils, and it occurred to him that he had yet to see or hear about anyone here actually going to sleep. "What are you really saying, Major Bangs?"

  "I was in charge of a JSOC detail that was sent to Guyana under the CIA in '78, Storch. Wargame maneuvers, they told the Pentagon, but we were supposed to surround the People's Temple compound and 'contain' it. They say it was mass suicide, and everybody beat their breasts and wailed that it could've been stopped. It couldn't, and it wasn't mass suicide. People's Temple was a CIA-sponsored concentration camp. They tested germs, drugs, mind-control, torture techniques, every sick fucking thing you can imagine, and we were the camp guards, us, the fucking Green Berets, Storch. And when it was all over, when it was time to clean house, most of the cultists still had enough of their minds left to try to flee. And we mowed them down. We were so clean that the handful of survivors never even knew we were there."

  "So you think Radiant Dawn is another People's Temple."

  "I think it goes beyond anything humans have ever tried before on this earth, but, as God is my witness, the CIA, the Pentagon and the President are behind it. They never lost touch with that fucking satellite, or if it did burn up, they launched another one, and they helped Keitel fake his death and come back as Keogh. Blowing up Challenger didn't mean a fucking thing. They helped him rebuild Radiant Dawn into a new kind of concentration camp so they could recreate the South Pacific experiment on a larger scale, with the kids he spawned in the cult back in the seventies. He's gathering them there because only people with cancer can survive the radiation, and change. It's gone beyond a Star Wars offensive weapon, but the powers that be are the ones sitting on the button. Armitage won't accept it, but you have to."

  "Why should I believe you, and not them? Did you serve with my father?" Or maybe share a padded cell with him?

  "You know what I'm talking about. I've read your file. When you came back from Iraq, did they admit they knew what was wrong with you, or even try to find out? Why should they, if they already knew? They inserted a strike team into that chemical weapons plant to steal what the Iraqis were working on, which was a chemical weapon that might neutralize the controlled mutations our side's trying to produce at Radiant Dawn. You know they hung your squad out to dry. You know they exposed you to something that makes you different than you were. Why else would you be so important to them now? You said yourself everybody else in your squad is either dead or still in the service, under their thumbs. Who else but the government could do what they've done to you?"

  Storch didn't want to be seen in this much pain, knew they'd mistake it for weakness. All of them so hard up to get inside his head and squeeze his brains; their paranoia as poisonous as the palpable miasma of machine oil from the motor pool. "So what you're afraid of, is that we're going to have to fight the real Army?"

  "I'm afraid we won't," the Major said without shame, his eyes so wide and glassy they seemed to be throwing off a light of their own. "Do you know what I'm saying? I'm afraid there is no right side of this conflict."

  "I need to go lie down," Storch said. "Respectfully submitted, sir, I suggest you do the same." His cell was drawing nearer, and Bangs stopped, still staring at him.

  30

  Dr. Delores Mrachek hadn't gotten out of her chair at the computer in twenty-four hours. Stella sat on the examination table, her legs drawn up under her, and watched the stout little doctor plug away, and she knew that things, as strange as they'd become, were about to change again. Mrachek hadn't responded to any of her attempts to draw attention to herself, ignoring bribes, taunts and sincere begging for an explanation. She paused from her work only to inject herself with a stimulant from an unlabeled bottle she kept in a minifridge on the counter beside her terminal every couple of hours.

  That they were about to relocate was clear, for Mrachek had assembled the irreplaceable components of the lab—mostly tissue samples in ice chests and cardboard boxes of printouts, and a few pieces of inscrutably complex equipment—in an hour, and then set to downloading the entire contents of her medical computer onto several bulky portable hard drives in bulletproof cases. Stella thought this must be what the black boxes of airliners look like.

  Outside, the soldiers sprinted up and down the corridor carrying gear. In stark contrast to the monastic silence of the previous week, the shouting and cursing for no reason at all reminded her of Mexican immigrants in the moments before la emigra broke down the door. Stella felt an odd flutter of nervous excitement and dread deep down, in the deadly nether-heart beating in her liver. There would be flight, and if there was a chance to escape, it would be today. But she thought of the Stephen/Napier-thing in the ice chests, and what it'd taken to get it in there. They would be more likely to kill her and can her parts for their experiments than let her run loose.

  Mrachek seemed to be lost in contemplation of a molecular diagram endlessly unraveling in three dimensions, then zipping back up. Every so often, she'd freeze the transformation and tweak a carbon chain or alter the ambient pH or temperature levels, then lose herself again in the new permutation. Stella climbed off the table and went to Mrachek and covered her eyes with both hands. Immediately, she regretted it. Mrachek's skin was cold and dry as marble. Her eyebrows were drawn on. And she was shivering so fast she felt like a precision motor racing at top rpm's with the clutch engaged. In her frustration, Stella had put her in gear.

  Mrachek's arm snaked around Stella's arm and yanked her off-balance. Her other dry little hand poked Stella's windpipe with three ramrod stiff fingers, gave it a little jab to emphasize how quickly she'd come upon death.

  "Don't—ever—touch—me," she hissed in Stella's face.

  "Can somebody get me some aspirin?" a tired man's voice split the moment before things could get any uglier.

  Mrachek froze, giving Stella room to disentangle herself. She turned to face the interloper, and she, too, froze. It was the killer they couldn't keep in a cage, the one they'd been fighting over. Her breath stung in her throat, and she couldn't bring herself to speak. Unconscious, bound and sedated, he'd intrigued her, because he frightened her captors. Awake and advancing on her, with a fiberglass brace on his left arm like a battering ram, he scared her half to death for just a moment before she could wrap herself in the blanket of her native anger. "See to him, and get him out of here," Mrachek muttered, then returned to her screen-gazing.

  "What're you doing out of your cage?" Stella asked, trying to sound bolder than she felt.

  "I've got a powerful bad headache, and I need to get some sleep," Storch said. "I'd be mu
ch obliged if you could make it happen, ma'am."

  Stella nodded and crossed the room to the first aid dispensary, but she watched Storch like a rabid dog on a weak leash. His eyes flicked around the sickbay, taking in the luggage and Mrachek at her computer. He showed no reaction other than a mute, quizzical expression that quickly melted back into the default of incredibly tense neutrality. He doesn't know what's happening, either. He's not one of them, not quite, not yet. But he wasn't in the same boat as her. They were going to use him, and for something far harder than their plans for her. She opened the case and found several packets of ibuprofen, then stiffened as she felt his breath on her neck. She turned and saw that he was still standing across the room. What was he doing to her? It made her angrier, as it made her more afraid.

  "So," he said, visibly uncomfortable, "looks like moving day. Where're you headed?"

  "Nobody tells me anything, soldier. I'm not one of them." She came over and pressed the packets into his broad, knobby hand. "I'm a dual-purpose hostage-guinea pig, right, Doctor?" Mrachek was lost in contemplation.

  He looked at the packets and dropped them on the examination table. "I can't take these, ma'am. Just plain old aspirin'll do fine." He rubbed his temples, and his jaw muscles bulged as he bit back a new surge of pain. She could almost see the blood vessels in his temples and in his eyes dilate and writhe. "And please don't stand so close, no offense. It's just—your perfume—it makes me…sick."

  "I'm not wearing perfume, asshole," she said. "I didn't think anyone who'd killed so many people would whine about a little headache."

  "I've had this headache off and on for going on nine years," he said.