The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War)

by L. L. Richman

  “Based on the captain’s reports, engineering and bridge crews have had to barricade themselves in to keep the passengers at bay,” Duncan spoke quietly into the silence.

  Beside him sat the governor-general, and beside her, the prime minister. The governor-general’s expression was grave, but the prime minister’s face was frozen in shock, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

  “They’re panicking,” the governor-general said in a low voice. “With so many deaths, you can see why.”

  “Is there any way out of this, Amara? Any other option?” Duncan asked.

  Toland pressed her lips together until they were nothing but a bloodless line. “No, Director. The Akkadians corrupted the data at the Proxima base, and left no samples behind. Until we can get our hands on that virus, we can’t be certain how they’ve reassorted the gene sequences.”

  “And that means?” The question came from Fleet Admiral Wake, the man in charge of the Alliance Navy.

  Duncan saw a tic begin to form as Toland clenched her jaw.

  “Without any kind of blueprint, the best we’ve been able to do is send them antiviral nano for existing hemorrhagic fevers, hoping they do some small amount of good.”

  “But it’s not working?” Duncan asked.

  Toland shook her head. “No, sir. It is not.”

  He felt his chest go tight as he thought through the ramifications of what they were considering.

  He looked over at Wake. The man had a decent poker face, but Duncan could see a banked agony behind the man’s eyes.

  “Redoubtable has a pair of Novastrikes on standby,” Wake told Duncan quietly. “All you have to do is say the word.”

  The governor-general drew in a breath. “Whatever we decide, this goes no further than this room. I want this close-held until we’ve had a chance to contact next of kin.”

  Duncan nodded his understanding, and then looked up as the captain of the destroyer broke in again.

  {The ship hasn’t deviated from this heading. She’s still on course for port,} Redoubtable’s skipper was saying. Duncan could hear the tension in the man’s voice. {If you want us to take action, we’ll need to do it soon. They’re due to arrive by the end of the day.}

  Duncan met Wake’s eyes. “Give the order,” he said, his voice heavy.

  Wake nodded. Toggling the holo, he addressed the destroyer’s commanding officer. “Captain Ensminger. You are ordered to fire upon that yacht. She is not to reach port. I repeat, she is not to reach port.”

  There was a beat of silence. Ensminger’s face stared back at them, his expression calm. The only thing that betrayed his inner turmoil was the hard swallow he had to force before his words would come.

  “Understood, sir.”

  As the holo went blank, Duncan heard the governor-general’s voice whisper, “May God have mercy on their souls—and on ours for ordering it.”

  * * *

  The captain of the Atliekan Queen sat in her chair on the bridge as she spoke to the Novastrike pilot who had been her shadow for the past day.

  {You still out there, Dover Three-two?} she asked.

  {Yes, ma’am,} replied the voice of the young man flying the Novastrike thousands of kilometers off her starboard bow. {Everything okay over there, ma’am?}

  She looked over at the feed from the corridor leading to the bridge, and saw the pile of bodies that lay motionless. Blood dripped from their eyes, their noses, their ears.

  She flipped to the feed still open in medical, saw Josh’s dead body propped up in his chair where he’d expired while trying desperately to send data to the CID.

  “Been better,” she whispered, swallowing hard.

  Somehow, enviro had been breached, as had engineering. She supposed it was now just a matter of time before the virus made its way onto the bridge.

  She’d begun to feel feverish an hour earlier, and her comm officer had collapsed with a groan just before that. When she’d reached over to touch him, he’d screamed, the pain from that simple contact more than he could bear. He was unconscious now, and she wondered how much longer he’d be around.

  {So, Dover, huh?} she replied with forced joviality. {Are you with the one hundred and first, then? Last I heard, they were based on Redoubtable. They still call her the Banana Boat?}

  {Yes, ma’am,} the pilot’s voice said, a note of surprise in his tone. {Pardon me for asking, but were you Navy?}

  {I spent a few years in the service. Racked up a few hours in that spaceframe you’re flying, too. Mind if I ask your name?}

  {Slater, ma’am. Captain Rich Slater.}

  She nodded and took a moment to wipe the sweat from her brow. It was getting hotter in here—or was it the fever?

  {Nice to meet you, Captain. Name’s Nolotov. Zoya Nolotov.}

  * * *

  When the yacht’s captain had initially pinged him, Slater had been polite, but quietly impatient. Privately, he thought that shepherding a cruise liner wasn’t the kind of job a Novastrike pilot should do.

  He’d been surprised by her callout of Redoubtable’s nickname. That knowledge wasn’t something he expected a glorified bus driver to know. And her name… now, why was it so familiar?

  {So, Captain Nolotov, did you serve on Redoubtable before you retired, ma’am?}

  When the woman’s voice came back, she sounded winded, as if she’d just come off a sprint. {Not the Banana Boat, no. I spent most of my time on the Audacious.}

  {Hell of a destroyer, ma’am, with a great record. Were you deployed on her during the Zosher incident?}

  The woman coughed a laugh. {I captained her during that shitstorm.}

  Slater looked at the image of the yacht on his holo with new respect. {Ma’am, the stories of that battle are what caused me to want to be a Novastrike pilot. I had holos of all the ships that were there, plastered everywhere in my room when I was a kid.} The words tumbled from him in unabashed hero worship. {What you did there was truly brilliant. Did you know we study your maneuvers? Wait’ll I tell the squadron back on the Boat.}

  He was gushing, and he didn’t care. The babysitting job he’d abhorred was turning into a pretty sweet gig after all.

  A flash over his comms caught his attention.

  {Sorry, ma’am, got to bounce to another frequency for a bit. Be right back.}

  {Take your time,} she responded. {I have nowhere to go.}

  The brief comm flash contained a link to an encrypted feed from Parliament House. When he accepted it, he found himself facing five people he never thought he’d meet, virtually or otherwise.

  The conversation was brief, a handful of minutes at most. But what they told him had Slater reeling.

  He asked for confirmation twice, unable to believe what they were telling him to do. To his stunned horror, his orders did not change.

  When the connection dissolved, he found himself staring once more at the vessel that filled his visual frame. The image blurred, and he blinked. Only when he felt the runnels of wetness trailing down his face did he realize his tears were the reason the visual had begun to warp.

  “Oh stars. Oh stars,” he chanted softly aloud as he reached mentally for the connection to Zoya Nolotov. {Ma’am, are you still there?}

  He was glad the conversation was over the wire; he knew he could never have forced the words out of his mouth.

  {Still here.} Her voice was fainter. {You know, Rich, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking….}

  Her voice faded away, and he waited silently for her to continue.

  {My comm officer here on the bridge, he just passed. He was a good man, a friend. His death, it wasn’t… pretty.}

  Slater cleared his throat. {Captain—}

  {I was thinking. You know, I cheated death in the Zosher incident. This isn’t how I envisioned it would go down. Do those Novastrikes still carry a load of Banshees?}

  Slater’s throat convulsed.

  {Yeah,} he sent after a moment. {Yes, we do.}

  {Good. Now here’s what�
�}

  {Captain,} he interrupted, {would you do me a favor? Could you switch to visual?}

  A holo connection request appeared on his HUD moments later. Slater accepted and stared back at the woman, sitting up as straight as his pilot’s cradle would allow.

  He snapped her a sharp salute, tears brimming in his eyes. She returned it, an unutterably weary and haunted look in hers.

  “A favor of my own, Captain?” she said as she lowered her hand.

  “Anything.”

  “I have a brother. We’re very close. This will devastate him. If it’s ever allowed… will you look him up?”

  “Ma’am,” Slater nodded, unable to say more.

  “Fair skies and tailwinds, Captain.” Nolotov nodded, and then cut the connection.

  Slater pulled back on the Novastrike, sending her in a loop that would place him on a direct intersect for the yacht. With a steady hand, he reached into the cockpit’s holo and armed the Banshees. He squeezed his eyes shut, although it didn’t help any; the SyntheticVision link tied into his optics burned an image into his mind he would never forget.

  “Stars. Oh stars,” he whispered aloud. “I’m so, so sorry….”

  SECURITY SWEEP

  Merki Institute

  Downtown Midland

  Hawking Habitat

  Intel from the strike force in Proxima came in just as Micah, Gabe, and the two spec-ops teams landed at Hawking’s Midland spaceport.

  We got her, bro.

  Jonathan’s words released the knot in Micah’s chest he’d been carrying around ever since he first heard she’d been taken.

  Sam’s unharmed?

  Jonathan’s mental tone held genuine amusement. Unharmed, pissed, and with a mean elbow.

  A… what?

  The guy holding her captive? She clocked him with an elbow strike under the jaw, Jonathan sent. Thad said it was a thing of beauty.

  Micah grinned as he envisioned the petite blonde in action. Didn’t know she had it in her. How’d Wraith fare?

  There was a beat of silence.

  They had a small fleet of Hydras on patrol that were lying doggo, Jonathan admitted, and Micah heard a trace of self-recrimination in his mirror self’s voice. Their energy signatures were masked by the flare, just like ours when we arrived. Sensors didn’t pick up on them, and they managed to launch a strike.

  Micah ground to a halt in alarm, eliciting a concerned look from Gabe. He waved the agent on and resumed his walk toward the spaceport’s exit.

  Well, you’re obviously alive. Are you unharmed? he probed.

  Me? Oh, sure, I’m fine. Crew’s all fine.

  Jonathan didn’t sound fine, though.

  You scratched the paint job, didn’t you?

  He leveled the accusation at his twin in an attempt to inject some levity into the mental conversation.

  Aw, hell.

  Jonathan paused, and Micah braced himself to receive bad news.

  They got one of the Novastrikes. Pilot ejected, and then the idiot Hydra pilot had to go and suicide on us. It was too close to the escape pod, and shrapnel shredded it.

  Micah’s gut clenched in sympathy. It was tough watching a comrade fall.

  Do we know him? he asked.

  Not sure. Does Ben sound familiar?

  Micah wracked his brain, but couldn’t put a face to the name. Not to me, no.

  Well, he’s in stasis. Hopefully he’ll pull through.

  Micah felt Jonathan wrench himself mentally from that train of thought.

  Anyway. Sam says to tell you the bioweapon left the base for Hawking sometime yesterday. They’ve encapsulated it into aerosolized cylinders that look like this.

  An image appeared in Micah’s head, one of the side benefits of their shared quantum state.

  He nodded. We guessed it might be something like that. Already have Pascal and Sneaky Pete dialed in and looking for something along these lines.

  He looked around for Gabe. Spotting the man, Micah waved him over.

  “You hear from Thad?” he asked.

  TF Blue’s second-in-command shook his head. “No, should I have?”

  Micah held up a finger, silently signaling him to wait a moment. Hey, is Thad going to be giving Gabe a sitrep? he asked his mirror twin.

  Yeah. But things are a bit of a mess over here, so give him a minute, Jonathan told him.

  I’ll give him the short version for now, and Thad can fill him in when he gets freed up.

  Jonathan sent a mental nod. He says go ahead.

  Micah let his connection to his doppelganger fade, and gave Gabe a summary of the Proxima operation. He’d just finished the briefing when they stepped out of the spaceport and into the sunny skies of a Midland afternoon.

  The day was a warm one inside the McKendree cylinder, and the atmosphere generated a surprisingly blue sky.

  Gabe lifted his chin. “I’m always surprised to see clouds floating by in a habitat this size,” he said as they caught up with Ell, Sasha, and the rest of the team.

  Quinn, Ell’s assistant, also tilted his head skyward and squinted. “Well, there’s lot of atmosphere between here and the other side.”

  Gabe nodded, conceding the point. Then he stepped closer and lowered his voice. “We have news. I’ll brief you on the way.”

  The conversation switched to the combat net that had been established before leaving Nimitz. This way, they could loop Rafe in as well.

  The major had remained behind to set up a flight plan for his fighter wing—one that had increased their presence within the habitat’s surrounding nearspace.

  Half an hour later, with the team fully briefed, Micah found himself standing across the street from the Merki Institute, with a large hunting cat by his side, and a ferret on his shoulder. He tilted his head back and looked up at the building, his eyes following it to the top. Somehow, he’d never envisioned a skyscraper inside a habitat.

  If the institute was trying to impress, he’d give them top scores. It was an imposing structure.

  {We’re a go for Menagerie,} he heard Sasha say over the net.

  Micah responded with a two-click, wincing internally at the operation’s code name.

  It was Rafe’s suggestion—one Micah vowed he’d repay him for once the op had concluded.

  Today’s undertaking was recon only, and would be followed by a briefing back at Nimitz. The intel from the team in Proxima suggested the attack wouldn’t occur until the summit began the following morning.

  It also suggested that Akkadian agents had infiltrated service organizations supporting the summit. Ell had Quinn running those agencies through another round of security checks, hoping to identify the operatives before the event launched.

  Micah stepped off the curb and ducked under the barricade that barred pedestrians and transports from breaching the perimeter that Protective Services had set it up in concert with Coalition forces the day before, in preparation for the event.

  {Heading in now,} he informed the team as he crossed the street and walked to the entrance.

  He knew snipers from both Delta and Foxtrot had eyes on him, and his overlay sparkled with icons indicating the cloud of surveillance microdrones that floated around him.

  As much as was possible, the team was taking no chances with this op.

  He nodded a greeting to the two Alliance Navy MPs standing watch over the front doors. Their SIs challenged his ID token, and he waited patiently while they scanned it.

  The soldier on the right moved aside with a nod. “You’re cleared to enter, Captain.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Micah said.

  He stepped out of Midland’s sunny afternoon into the subtle elegance of the institute. A blast of chilled air hit him, and he mentally adjusted his suit to compensate for the differential.

  Sneaky Pete chittered his displeasure with the blast of air, and curled his tail around Micah’s neck.

  Micah lifted a hand to steady the animal while he glanced around, seeking likely plac
es for aerosolized canisters to be stashed. Dappled light filtered in through large, paned windows, casting long shadows against the marble floor. Low, cushioned benches lined the walls, and comfortable sofas sat in small clusters on either side of the lobby. The area was bare otherwise, barring an ornate chandelier that hung in the center of the open, three-story space.

  {No likely candidates in the lobby. Too big an area to aerosolize,} he sent.

  {Agreed. Protective Services has ruled that out as well,} Gabe replied.

  Micah’s boots made no sound against the floor as he crossed the polished tiles, thanks to the cloud of microdrones enveloping him. Another pair of MPs awaited him at a kiosk that looked like some sort of reproduction concierge station straight from Old Earth. On the other side of that were two more agents—his escort, if he had to guess.

  The MPs at the secondary checkpoint made short work of his ID token, and, like the soldiers outside, didn’t bat an eye at the ferret clinging to his neck or the cat that paced silently beside him.

  He’d been correct; the pair that awaited him were his assigned escort.

  The shorter of the two stuck out his hand for Micah to shake. “Brad Torgen,” he said, “Coalition Secret Service.” He nodded to the tall, rangy woman who stood beside him. “Corporal Ginder, Ganymede Protection Detail.”

  “Thanks for the escort and the tour,” Micah greeted. “You said you had a list for us of the people who’ve had access to the ballroom where the summit is being held?”

  The corporal nodded. “We do,” she said, and an invitation to join the Protective Services’ net appeared on his overlay.

  Micah had a sector of his wire already partitioned off and ready to accept the PS net. Once connected, he accessed the file that awaited him and scanned the names on the list. They matched the names that Ell had already fingered and Quinn was running traces on.

  He glanced between the sergeant and the corporal. “I understand you’ve been monitoring them?”