Farenough: Strangers Book 2

by Melissa McCann

  She treated another two tribbles in varying stages of infection. As she'd expected, Honeybear first begged for fruit pellets, then became more aggressive, trying to take them directly from Annia's hands. Finally, she put the hypodermic down and draped the catpil over her arm. She carried it to the door of the lab and stepped out. Her door guards turned to look. Annia handed Honeybear to the man on the left who took it by reflex then looked like he regretted the impulse.

  Annia said, "Put it out to hunt. Someplace where no one will step on it." The guard stared down at the squirming animal for a moment.

  Annia said, "It's going to eliminate soon." Catpil leavings weren't especially noxious, but they were liquid and made a mess.

  She waited long enough to see the man start toward the outer doors before she retreated into the lab as if she didn't care what happened to an inconvenient housepet. Maybe if she were being watched, she had just smuggled a sample of the viable virophage out of the lab.

  Back to the tribble cages, and Annia thumbed the cartridge with its last few drops of seething golden suspension out of the hypodermic and went to the first aid cabinet. She drank another food concentrate and peeled a stimulant patch. She didn't really need the stimulant, but, while sticking the patch to her chest, she dropped the near-empty vial down the front of her coat, hoping the folded-back portion of the bodice would cover any bulge made by the cartridge. One more sample secreted. Should she have hidden it somewhere in the room instead? No, it would be found once Annia was gone. The trick was to keep the samples and the data moving.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Annia took a tiny tube of surgical adhesive and concealed it inside her palm. Back at her monitor, with Elizabeth-Belle cursing over Chesterfield beside her, Annia snapped the data crystal from its clamp and palmed it, replacing it with an empty one. This time, she told the processor to make the transfer openly. She pretended to review the new phage variant growing in Elizabeth-Belle's monitor. It would go faster if the woman wasn't actually trying to hammer it into a semblance of viability. Then again, Annia didn't want it to go fast. The longer they appeared to be struggling with an impossible problem, the more time Annia would have to get a copy of the phage to the DPH ahead of Solante.

  She wandered back toward the compiler as if she were going to check its progress manually. She ran her hand around the frame of the machine, feeling for a ledge or hollow where she could hide a crystal. The nearby sequencer failed her as well. If she could have gone around to the back of the machines…but that would be conspicuous. The tribbles. Annia returned to the tribble cages and selected the woolly brown animal. She rubbed the hollow between its leg bumps, and the animal warbled, extending all four limbs to their full length of six centimeters or so. Pretending to check the skin for hives, Annia parted the woolly hair and dabbed a bit of surgical glue onto the tribble's skin. She pressed the crystal dodecahedron into the glue and held it until it stuck firm. The tribble warbled.

  What else could she do? Annia returned the tribble to its cage and went to the smooth-coated white animal. It lay by the bars of its cage like an inanimate thing, all four leg stubs retracted, but when Annia approached, it opened its eyes and purred. Annia took a tissue sample. She had just inserted the sample into the sequencer when something thumped at the door of the laboratory.

  Annia jumped. It wasn't a courteous request for admission. The door slid open, and Mr. Krotoschiner marched in like a general at the head of an army. In this case, he led only six men, all in Solante's blue sash-and-cap uniforms. His mouth turned down at the corners when he saw Annia. "Really, Doctor Annia...Chesterfield? Did you really expect me to take you seriously when you tried to apply Chesterfield?"

  Tried to apply. He hadn't known what she was doing until Elizabeth-Belle had begun working the modifications on the processor, so he had been monitoring everything she did on the logic net. Did that mean they didn't have audio pickup in the lab? But holo'cordings...had they been able to see what Annia did? Or had she managed to make her actions look normal enough to get away with at least one sample of her phage intact?

  One of the bulls took Elizabeth-Belle by the arm and pulled her out of her chair. She tried to yank her arm free, but his grip on her biceps dug deep into muscle. She had the sense not to sputter threats based on her family's political influence. The Charmmes family name didn't carry weight in Murrayville where Ganymede Solante dictated the law. She did glare at Annia, though.

  Krotoschiner went straight to the compiler and before Annia could read his intent, he flipped open the switch-cover and triggered the destruct cycle.

  Annia inhaled on a scream and tried to lunge across the room to stop him or cancel the destruct, though it was already too late for either action. Her weak legs wouldn't hold her weight anyway, and she fell into the arms of the driver who had helped her to organize the hospital the previous day.

  "Don't get excited, Doctor Annia," he said. "There's nothing you can do about it, so might as well go along."

  "I'm infectious," she told him. "I have the plague. You're picking up more viral bodies every moment you touch me."

  "Don't worry about that." He supported her with an arm around her waist. "There's a cure now."

  "He's destroying the cure. Nobody is going to get the cure."

  "It's not like that, Doctor Annia. We'll get it, all Mr. Solante's people. Anyone who recognizes Murrayville is too big for camp charter now and needs real leadership."

  "He'll hold it for ransom. He'll expect every inhabited world to sell their souls to the Black Man for the cure. Millions of people will die."

  He seemed to hesitate just an instant, then he said, "It won't come to that, Doctor Annia. Everybody will be reasonable. Everything will work out all right."

  Mr. Krotoschiner stabbed a finger toward the tribble cages. "Incinerate those." Annia squirmed in the driver's grip. "The plague and the phage will both be out of their bodies in a few hours. You don't need to kill them." It was one thing to use the animals for live testing where you already had successful bio-sim results—they had very little central nervous system and virtually no pain sensitivity—but they were inoffensive, and there was no reason to kill these.

  "They're just animals, Doctor Annia," the driver murmured. His reassuring voice grated Annia's nerves.

  "Search them both," Krotoschiner ordered.

  Now Elizabeth-Belle did snarl threats and curses at the bulls who searched her clothes, and they retaliated with stomach-churning jokes about how thoroughly they should search.

  The driver said, "None of that. Mr. Solante doesn't want Doctor Annia mistreated, and that goes for her friend, too. Excuse me, Doctor Annia, I have to do my job, but there's no disrespect meant."

  He patted her down discretely, and she endured the indignity with her face flushed from anger. His hands swept up her waist. He might miss the little cartridge inside her coat. He might have heard and understood enough of what she had said about Solante to decide not to notice the hard lump.

  Then his fingers found the vial. "Excuse me, Doctor Annia." He reached into the waist of her coat and removed the cartridge and its yellow-gold contents. "This is all she had," he reported to Mr. Krotoschiner.

  The administrator took the vial, dropped it on the floor and crushed it with his heel.

  Annia flinched.

  "This one's clean," one of the bulls searching Elizabeth-Belle said.

  One of the bulls had sat in front of Annia's monitor and started scanning the function logs. He said, "I'm copying everything they did today." He pulled a glittering crystal from a pocket and reached to slot it into the clamp. "Ha." He held up the second crystal copy Annia had made of her data. "Looks like they did it for us." He leaned into the monitor. "Just the one copy."

  So she’d managed to hide the first download, but they would almost certainly find the crystal glued to the brown tribble’s fur. If not, it would be destroyed with the animals anyway.

  Mr. Krotoschiner jerked a hand in Annia's direction. "Put t
hem out."

  Annia didn't waste her strength in resistance. The driver led her toward the front doors with one arm around her waist, steering her around the huddled families and sprawled bodies. She wanted to stop and check some of the bodies for life signs, but she wasn't sure how long she would continue to have life signs herself, and she still had one reservoir of her phage untouched if the guard had done as she asked and taken Honeybear outside and turned it loose. All she had to do was get it and present it to Planetary Health. They could extract the phage and resequence it to replicate the plague cure. People would die in the meantime, but she couldn't do anything about that.

  The driver helped her through the doors and out onto the street. The sun had baked the smell of blood and vomit and feces into an odor unique to itself. Annia covered her nose and swayed. The driver steadied her. "Do you have somewhere to go, Doctor Annia?"

  She pulled her arm out of his clasp and stood straight. "I'll be fine."

  He actually ducked his head at the anger in her voice. "It will all turn out all right, Doctor Annia. You'll see. People will be reasonable." He hesitated as if he wanted to say something more but couldn't think what. "You'll see," he said finally.

  Elizabeth-Belle passed him going into the hospital as she came out. "Well, that was a waste of time," she grumbled when she saw Annia. She adjusted her shirt and trousers where they had been rumpled by Solante's bulls.

  Annia wanted a wall to lean on, but sick and exhausted people leaned or lay against every possible supporting surface. Annia inhaled the stink of dying people and located the nearest dark alley.

  Elizabeth-Belle followed her. "What are you doing now? Your local crime-lord has your cure; all we can do is wait for the Family to come up with their own."

  When the alley hid them from the hospital and the bulls outside the doors, Annia turned to Elizabeth-Belle. "Go to the barricades on the Throughroad. The Cyrion police will be there. Tell them we have a cure. They have to protect the town until we can get the cure to the DPH."

  "We don't have the cure."

  "We will. I injected a dose into the catpil. I'm going to find it, but someone has to communicate with Cyrion."

  "It won't survive in a catpil." Elizabeth-Belle showed no signs of running for the town limits.

  Annia didn't have the energy to argue. She turned her back on the other woman and proceeded down the alley, snapping her fingers and calling softly for the catpil.

  "You're wasting your time," Elizabeth-Belle repeated.

  Annia turned a corner and clicked her tongue. The smell of rotten flesh and feces didn't immediately trigger alarm. She'd been smelling sickness for several minutes now, but she had been gradually moving away from the strongest concentration. She straightened. She had smelled this before in a different context. In Solante's house. She turned

  The hunter strode down the alley toward her, its hand extended, exposing the contact stunner mounted in the sleeve of the skin-tight life-support suit.

  Annia started to back away. "Elizabeth-Belle get out of here. Tell Cho'en or Mr. Hollin to look for the catpil."

  Elizabeth-Belle scowled at the cyborg. "What is that supposed to be?" She moved into its path.

  Annia spotted an escape route to her left and darted into it. Rather, she tried to dart. She should have covered herself in stim-patches back in the lab while she had the chance. She just saw the hunter push Elizabeth-Belle aside and Elivabeth-Belle jerk as the contact stunner jolted her. Then the hunter came for Annia faster than humans, faster than the human eye could follow. It appeared before her. The twisted hand reached out. She felt the shock, then she finally got to rest.

  #

  In his office at the spaceport, Mr. Fosby cocked his head at a vibration in the stone walls. The faint throb would have gone unnoticed by anyone who had not spent each day of the past fifteen years feeling the pulse of ship engines in his sinuses.

  "Mr. Dolman, what ship is that?"

  His assistant's voice over the speaker sounded harried. "The hunter ship, sir. I'm trying to override its lift-off, but I can't get into its systems."

  The throb in the stones deepened. "Is it jumping atmosphere?"

  "It appears to be warming only atmospheric jets. I've got holo'views for you now."

  Mr. Fosby's monitor flicked to life. The hook-and-needle shape of the hunter rocked on its atmospheric jets and rotated until it faced north. Propulsion jets fired.

  Mr. Fosby slapped his com pad. "Get that ship down, Mr. Dolman."

  No answer. Not even a "Yes sir." Mr. Dolman was busy.

  The big guns on the mountain swiveled and fired. No sign of a tracking error now. Missiles smoked toward the hunter. The ship, however, was armed. Slender bolts of coherent fire touched the missiles, light and menacing as sneakdillies, and the missiles detonated without so much as rocking the ship.

  Mr. Dolman said, "I'll have to stop firing or endanger civilians, sir. I've given the details to the police on the Murrayville perimeter. They might be able to turn it back with their light craft."

  "Thank-you, Mr. Dolman. Lock down those guns, and good shooting, for what it's worth."

  "Thank-you, sir. Is there anything else we can do?"

  "No, Mr. Dolman, we will have to settle for wishing its quarry good luck."

  #

  Mr. Ventnor met Tora coming back to the sheltered control center behind a shack. "Colonel, there's a police slider coming down the road."

  Tora joined her soldiers behind the barricades. When the fighting ended, Liam had moved his control center to the town line where he could watch the black-uniforms while his runners brought him information and he told Tora what it meant. The Civilian Support Corps could work now, too, and the runners brought information so that Liam could tell the Civilian Support Corps where to take food and water to the humans under quarantine.

  Some of the militia worked now to keep humans quiet and reassure them the black-uniforms would not come into the town. Tora did not trust the blue-sashes not to frighten the humans, so she kept most of them with her. They crouched on the roofs of the buildings facing the road, ready to throw rocks and bricks if the Special Commander Marduk changed his mind and decided to send the black-uniforms back into the town. The blue-sashes complained. They wanted to have projectile weapons and fight the black-uniforms. They had no sense and didn't know when to fight and when to negotiate. Some of Tora's militia who had confiscated stun weapons from the black-uniforms huddled behind barriers and watched Tora for direction.

  A black slider, all sharp edges and steep angles, glided on geomagnetic repulsorlifts toward the barricades. It didn't move fast. It wasn't heavy enough to ram the barricades. It wasn't big enough to hold more than three humans. Tora decided the enemy was not offering to fight. "Come," she said to Mr. Ventnor.

  Liam came too, without Tora giving him orders. Tora did not mind. She did not know when Liam had stopped being a soldier and stopped being her soldier, but she trusted him, so she did not mind that he did not belong to her anymore.

  The slider stopped two meters outside the barrier across the road. The canopy cracked open, and a helmeted, black-uniform soldier slid back and swung his legs over the side. He hesitated there.

  "No fighting," Tora said.

  The black-uniform soldier dropped to the ground and held up his hands. He approached Tora slowly. "Colonel Miraz, Commander Marduk sent me to tell you there's a Federated Systems hunter ship on its way here. Its pilot, some kind of clone, is already in Murrayville. Cyrion was going to start shooting with the big guns, but Commander Marduk told them to hold fire until he checked with you. What do you want to do?"

  Tora turned to Mr. Ventnor.

  He said, "If Cyrion starts shooting this way, people will panic, and they'll run in every direction. We'd have fires and fighting at the least, and we would almost certainly lose quarantine."

  Tora frowned. "Why does it come here?"

  Mr. Ventnor cocked his head. "If it's coming from the Federation, it's after y
ou or Doctor Annia, and I hear Mr. Solante's been keeping it like a pet, so best guess is Mr. Solante has what he wants from Doctor Annia, and he's giving the hunter what it wants."

  Tora stiffened and felt Liam tighten his muscles beside her. Annia was in danger. Annia was primary. "Where is enemy ship?"

  The black-uniform soldier said, "It's too big to land in the town. We think it's going to set down on the floodplain to the east."

  "When does it land," she asked.

  "Ten minutes at atmospheric speed."

  She turned to Liam. "Where is Annia?"

  "Hospital," he said.

  Mr. Ventnor looked at the black-uniform. "Colonel needs transportation."

  The black-uniform backed two steps toward his vehicle. "I don't have orders to drive anyone."

  "You drive or I drive," Mr. Ventnor said. "I don't mind either way."

  Tora felt Liam become relaxed and calm beside her, ready to take the black-uniform away from the slider if Tora ordered it, but she did not have to order it. The black-uniform shook his head, but he was not refusing orders. He sank into the pilot seat. "I don't have coordinates."

  Liam named the streets near the hospital, but the black-uniform just shook his head again. "I don't know the town. I need coordinates."

  Liam thought for a moment, then he said the planetary surface coordinates of the hospital. The black-uniform stared at Liam. "Is he serious?"

  Tora looked from the black-uniform to Liam and back. Why would Liam want to make a joke?