The Reaper Plague

by David VanDyke

  To Brigadier Nguyen, it simply reinforced his authority. Win-win.

  He smiled, encouraging. “You have had four weeks to work with the nanotech. I have seen your reports but I wanted your firsthand impressions. Specifically, what is the best way to employ this technology in the short term?”

  Erik bowed again reflexively and spoke English for the benefit of the others. “Honored Uncle, in the short term we need trustworthy normals. The cybercommando nanobots – we call them CCNs – cannot be injected into Edens. We are working on reprogramming and on improving the CCNs but that is a project for months, if not years. We are starting from scratch.”

  Spooky nodded, spoke mildly. “Trustworthy normals, uninfected by any Plague – Eden or Demon – are rapidly disappearing from the planet. The advantages of the Eden Plague are obvious. With the collapse of the United Governments of North America, only the Chinese and the Russians in their paranoia have not embraced Edens, and even there, self-infection is growing in their population. We need another approach.”

  The swarthy man to Erik’s right, Saul Birnbaum, twitched slightly, clearing his throat. Spooky waited until Erik nodded to him before asking, “What is it?”

  “Sir, I am spearheading an attempt to modify the US-provided nanovaccine that is compatible with Eden Plague. The bots are far simpler and less capable but I believe that within months my team will have some that will boost human performance significantly. Perhaps as much as twenty percent. And it will still function as a vaccine.”

  “Excellent.” Nguyen praised. “Please pay special attention to anything that will improve human capabilities in space.”

  The three men looked surprised. “Space?”

  “Yes. Our first priority is not ground forces or commandos on Earth. The war will eventually move into space, and I want to be ready to provide, oh, let’s call them Space Marines. Men who can operate effectively in weightlessness, extremes of cold and heat, even vacuum, if possible, are your goal. For example, men who could delay breathing for minutes or longer.”

  Birnbaum nodded, then bowed again self-consciously. “Yes, sir.”

  “How long until prototyping?”

  The scientist cleared his throat nervously. “Perhaps…three months?”

  “You have two. I want to see something then.” The General turned to the other. “What about you? Do you have another approach?” His eyes held those of the second subordinate, Deliah Pelapolos. He approved of her short dark hair and her no-nonsense manner, and she looked back at him with no fear. Perhaps I shall take this one for myself as well…assuming I can do it without interfering with her usefulness. It might be interesting to try to manage an Eden mistress. Yes, a stimulating challenge and something to keep Ann on her toes, perhaps. But not yet.

  “I am working on the long-term modification and reprogramming of the CCNs. The difficulty is in turning off their defensive immune functions, the programming that makes them attack all viruses.”

  Spooky’s eyebrows went up. “Just viruses?”

  “Yes, sir. They are not yet advanced enough to discriminate between normal cells and, say, a bacteriological infection. If they were programmed to kill bacteria, they would kill a lot of body cells as well, not to mention the beneficial bacteria that most humans need to survive – in the gut, on the skin. I believe this was the best the Americans could do at the moment. So the current cybercommandos can fend off viruses but not something like staph, or bacterial meningitis.”

  “That sounds like an interesting area to study for bio-weapons against enemy cybercommandos.”

  Eric nodded. “Yes, sir. We have a tentative plan for that but it’s not the priority right now. Unless you wish it to change.”

  Spooky pressed his lips together but nodded in agreement. One cannot fund and pursue every avenue. I need more resources. “I understand. How long for your prototype?”

  Deliah looked distressed, turning to Erik, her immediate boss, avoiding Spooky’s eyes this time. “I don’t know. There are too many unknowns. Best case…four to six months, unless we get more people and equipment. I really need a new supercomputer. Two would be better. And a number of other things.”

  “Supercomputers are hard to come by in these dark days, but I will see what I can do. Do your best with what you have. I have confidence in you all. Erik, have a list of people, or at least skill sets, that you need, in priority order, in case the funding comes through. If there are specific people, give me a basic workup on each – who they are, where I can find them, and so on. Perhaps they can be persuaded to join us. Is there anything else? No? You may go.”

  Spooky watched them walking out and timed his request carefully, casually. “Oh, Miss Pelapolos, I have one or two more questions for you. Would you come back in please?”

  Corrupting an Eden…a worthy challenge.

  -8-

  A quarter of the world away in South Africa, two similar rooms contained the two cybercommandos captured there. Miller had died of his wounds, but Banson and Marquez had survived due to the efforts of their nanites, desperately rebuilding tissue in the face of multiple assaults. Needleshock rounds had delivered Eden Plague directly into their wounds, but the tiny defenders had frantically destroyed millions of individual viruses, fighting off the infection, suppressing hematoma and closing wounds, speeding circulation and the carrying of oxygen and nutrients, a monumental, mindless effort to assist the men’s bodies’ natural healing.

  It was a triumph for the nanomachines, a tribute to their design team’s years of work, but beyond saving their lives it didn’t help the men. They lay conscious but confined by restraints and a low-level tuned induction field that suppressed the nanites’ functioning. It made them sluggish, the machine equivalent of a tranquilizer, so they were hardly stronger or faster than ordinary men and should be helpless in the face of Cassandra Johnstone’s interrogation. Presuming the nanites don’t help them resist, she thought. So much we don’t know.

  The Free Communities Council’s Chief of Intelligence – really Chairman DJ Markis’ spymaster – entered the bare access corridor in the block of a hastily-renovated old South African local jail, now incorporated into the Carletonville research facility.

  There was limited need for confinement in any Free Community. Crime, especially of the violent sort, had dropped by more than ninety percent in the last ten years even as reporting, policing and the judiciary became more efficient and less corrupt. The reinforced-concrete walls and inch-thick steel doors that used to hold drunken miners and accused diamond thieves now provided one more line of defense if the two commandos got loose somehow.

  She wasn’t entirely happy with her new role as jailer and interrogator, as she wasn’t really professionally fit for either. The call was out for assistance but it took time to find, hire and assign the proper people. Right now the lab complex’s security forces were doing the best they could running the jail while simultaneously trying to recover from the beating they took at the nanocommandos’ hands.

  Ditto for the medical personnel – the few that were available. Biological and nanomachine researchers were handy and eager to literally dig into their prisoners, but most of them were not medically qualified. She really needed someone competent to determine and administer correct dosages of drugs to men whose veins swarmed with millions of exotic microscopic machines. She doubted such a person existed in this hemisphere. Just have to make do.

  She nodded at the four guards, two men and two women, standing in the corridor holding exotic weaponry. She only knew two of them. “Morning, Karl, Bettina, officers. Sorry to abuse your skills this way.”

  Karl Rogett, the chief of Chairman Markis’ Personal Security Detachment, or PSD, smiled a hunter’s smile. “No problem, ma’am.” He hefted his weapon. “Gives us a chance to play with some new toys.”

  Cassandra looked over the guards’ equipment. Karl sported a heavy device that looked like a Buck Rogers ray gun grown to rifle size, a super-taser designed to temporarily knock out the
nanites and the target with a heavy jolt of electricity. One of the men she didn’t know held an automatic shotgun loaded with, she'd been told, alternating beanbag rounds and cartridges full of solidified gelatin pellets impregnated with knockout drugs and Eden Plague. The other, the woman, held a grenade launcher with a selection of tanglenet and sticky shells, and Bettina Looscher had a PW10 submachine gun with Needleshock in case the rest of them failed.

  Unfortunately, borrowing the Chairman’s personal security detachment was a short-term option. When they were unavailable she had to content herself with ordinary security guards and the physical restraints. I really need to find some confinement specialists.

  “Open the door,” she ordered. Bettina waved a badge at the scanner, then put in a code and the door clicked. She turned a handle, lifted a bar on a swivel, and stepped back.

  Karl went in first, checked the room then took position in a corner covering the man strapped to the table. Cassandra walked around to the other side, out of the line of fire. She hoped that electro-blaster didn’t have much collateral bleed.

  The man looked to be asleep, but the video feed she’d recently watched showed him looking around so she knew he was feigning unconsciousness. “Mister Banson?” He didn’t respond, so she reached across to pinch his nose shut with one hand while she covered his mouth with the other. A few seconds later his eyes popped open and he threw himself uselessly against the restraints. She let go.

  “That was just to demonstrate your helplessness, mister Banson. You need to understand you are helpless. Do you understand?”

  Banson glared at her. “Banson, Robert J. Sergeant First Class, 549-23 –”

  “Mister Banson, I’m not here to interrogate you. I just want to make sure you are all right, and that you know the terms of your imprisonment. You are a prisoner of war and will be treated in accordance with all the terms of the Geneva Convention, but because of your nano-enhancement you are particularly dangerous to yourself and others. I need to know that if we treat you properly you will not hurt anyone or try to escape.”

  “It’s my duty to try to escape,” he snarled.

  “I realize that, but perhaps you could just agree to put that off for a day. A one-day parole. You give me your word that you won’t try to escape for twenty-four hours and I’ll let you out of these restraints and you can eat and drink and we can sit down and talk like two normal people.”

  He shook his head. “Go screw yourself.”

  Cassandra signed, smiling sadly. “That’s not too farfetched, as I haven’t had a date in ten years. Much too busy dealing with problems like you. Oh, my name is Cass, by the way. Can I call you Robert? Rob, or Bobby? Bert? No? What, then?”

  He jerked at the restraints. “Banson, Robert J., Sergeant First Class –”

  “Stop that, Robert.” Cass laid her palm on the man’s arm, a calculated caress. “You’ll hurt yourself. We have the nanites suppressed. If we have to, we will clean them out of your body.”

  For the first time Banson looked worried, then he froze his face and stared at the ceiling, silent.

  Cass patted his arm sympathetically. “Just let me know when you’re willing to give your parole,” she said, and then withdrew, signaling Karl to follow her out.

  Bettina shut the door with a clang then dropped the bar with metallic finality. “Why didn’t you push him harder?” she asked Cass conversationally.

  Cass waved them farther down the corridor, then replied quietly. “Effective interrogation takes time, subtle psychological pressures. Rough measures rarely elicit reliable intelligence. Torture is counterproductive. Trust me to do it my way.” She waited until the others nodded in acquiescence. “All right, let’s see the other one now – Marquez. After that, I’ll be back every four to six hours. In a few days they’ll want to tell me everything I need to know and a lot I don’t.” I hope, she said to herself. Then: Admit it to yourself, Cass, you like this stuff. It’s fun to have power. She answered herself: Sure I do. Power isn’t evil, just its misuse.

  She turned to the other room, where Marquez waited helpless. Then she had some more fun.

  -9-

  Master Sergeant Repeth bolted breakfast and immediately went to talk to Captain LeBrun. She’d formally reported to him yesterday evening in her dress uniform, but there had been little time to talk. The formation of Homeland Security troops she had seen one barracks over had brought some questions to her mind.

  “What is it, Repeth?” LeBrun was a weathered man, tanned leather over Eden Plague over age, she thought. He seems old inside, old for an Army Captain, most of whom are seldom more than thirty. Maybe he’s up from the ranks. She pushed her speculations aside.

  “I was wondering about the Homeland Security platoon next door, sir. What are they doing here? Are they coming along?”

  “Yes, they’re coming along. That’s actually a company, Master Sergeant. Smaller unit size, though they will pick up a few more before we go.”

  She frowned. “It may not be my place to say, sir, but…unless they’re Edens now…”

  LeBrun nodded. “The atrocities.” He took a deep drag from his cigarette, and Repeth noticed the well-used ashtray, formed in the shape of a Ranger tab, half-full of butts. Fresh butts, she thought, since first thing this morning.

  “Yes, sir. I wonder how many had ‘SS’ instead of ‘HS’ on their uniforms just a few weeks or months ago. There were a lot of bad apples in the Security Service.”

  LeBrun stared at her, leaning back in his creaking metal chair, a piece of furniture that, like everything else in these barracks, looked like it had been in use continuously since the Vietnam conflict. “And I heard you have some personal experience with them.”

  He picked up a file from his desk. Inside she caught a glimpse of her own official photo. He spoke as he skimmed, “Triathlete, black belt in several martial arts, never failed to max the male standard PT test, even went to the Olympic track and field trials. Expert in all weapons quals, honor grad at your 3RT school, honor grad at jump school, distinguished grad at Close Quarters Combat school, on and on and on. Lost both feet to an IED in Iraq where you were assigned to train their police in special tactics. And then it ends abruptly. The report says you deserted, were convicted in absentia and dishonorably discharged, but it’s a Unionist document so I don’t put much stock in it.”

  LeBrun tossed the file back onto his desk with a thump. “Then it picks back up with a blizzard of nearly simultaneous orders – signed by the President, for Pete’s sake – pardoning you for all acts, rescinding the charge of desertion, reinstating you in the Marine Corps, promoting you, awarding you the goddamn Navy Cross for saving the President’s life, and then assigning you to humble little me.” His expression was not unfriendly, but skeptical.

  “And you want the gaps filled in.”

  “That would be nice,” he said drily. “I do need to know my people.”

  “Yes, sir. I contracted the Eden Plague on the cruise ship Royal Neptune – the one they sunk on Infection Day. I swam across to the USS Somerset and sneaked aboard. I found the chaplain there and told her what was going on – she believed me once they sank the cruise ship – and she smuggled me off with the wounded. I rejoined my unit but my feet were regrowing. I hid the situation as long as I could, but when the Unionists took over they mandated Eden Plague testing for everyone. That was when you might say I ‘deserted.’ On the other hand, I never took an oath to the Unionist Party and they had suspended the Constitution, so –”

  LeBrun waved her explanations away with his hand. “Never mind the legalities, just the facts.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, I went AWOL, then they caught me in Alabama when I ran out of mountains to hide in. They put me in a camp in Iowa. I escaped from that, made it to the Mexico border, swam the Rio Grande – they weren’t yet looking hard for people crossing southward – and made my way to South America. I volunteered for the Free Communities Armed Forces. US refugees with the right training were being swept int
o a Special Operations command under Colonel Nguyen, who was working for Chairman Markis. I was involved in a number of missions culminating in my…well, in the action described on the award.”

  “Singlehandedly saving the life of the President of the United States,” he quoted from the award’s text. “What in the hell do I do with you, Repeth?”

  “What do you mean, sir?” She drew herself up, dropping unconsciously to parade rest.

  “You’re a bona fide hero, but you’ve been fighting against your country for the last ten years.”

  Her expression tightened. “With all due respect, sir, the UGNA wasn’t my country. My country is the people and Constitution of the United States, and I was fighting for them, against the fascists. Sir.”

  LeBrun stood up, and she realized he was no taller than she was, a whippet of a man of perhaps five foot eight, but his sharp eyes and intense demeanor gave him an outsized presence. He took a final drag on his current smoke, then ground it out. “Good. I just wanted to hear it from your own lips, Top.” Clearly the nickname was an expression of trust: “you are my top soldier,” in Army terms.

  He reached up to the breast pocket of his camouflage jacket and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes, looking speculatively at her as he performed the smoker’s ritual of rapping the packet twice on his palm to seat the tobacco, opening the cellophane, then the box lid, then the foil inside, finally drawing forth one of the coffin nails to light with tilted head.

  She suddenly had a vision of him with a fedora, film noir.

  LeBrun took a deep drag before he spoke, fragrant smoke puffing from his lips with his words. “Do you think you’ll have any problem making the adjustment from the Special Operations mentality back to a line unit?”

  She took a slow breath, thinking over her response. “Not if you let me do my job my way, sir,” she finally said.