The Demon Plagues

by David VanDyke

  “Doc, shut up, pay attention and do your job. Get that stuff into the air system.” How she wished they had been able to find a special operations medic of some kind, but Doc had a ridiculously long list of technical skills, and that overrode purely operational concerns, given the eight-person limitation.

  “Right.” He popped the enormous housing, feeling the air rushing past now that the seals weren’t dogged down. Opening a lockblade, he cut a hole in the material of the man-sized cylindrical filter. It took him several minutes, as the material was over a foot thick. When he finally broke through, the suction almost took the knife out of his hand.

  Jill was ready with the tank. A pressurized plastic canister the size of a small fire extinguisher, instead of carbon dioxide it held Eden Plague suspended in a tranquilizer that would aerosolize and spread throughout the sub. Doc stuck the nozzle into the hole, opened the stopcock to start the fine spray, and let the suction pull it into place like a cork in a bottle.

  Jill keyed her UWB mike. “EP-sleepy deployed, no problems.”

  Clicks of acknowledgment echoed in her earpiece.

  ***

  Muzik and Harres departed the cargo hold toward the stern, immediately descending two ladders. As they reached the third and lowest deck, Murphy showed up in the form of the powerful arm and heavy wrench of Machinist’s Mate Second Class Harold Showalter. The tool slammed into the back of Harres’ head with a sickening crunch.

  Muzik immediately turned his weapon toward the sailor but had to flick it sideways to avoid another sweeping blow of the wrench. He let the gun go in favor of closing to grapple. Stepping inside the next swing, he grasped the attacker’s arm and thrust his hip to contact. Muzik then bent over, his powerful core muscles levering the sailor across his own back and hip and into the air. The man’s feet bounced off the low overhead and then onto the deck as the major body-slammed him.

  Stunned and gasping, Showalter feebly tried to crawl away, finally collapsing into unconsciousness when the trank gun hissed against his neck.

  “Shit,” muttered Muzik, staring down at Lieutenant Harres bleeding all over the spotless deck. He awkwardly stuck an IV in the man’s arm, getting it into the vein on the third try, and started a food solution drip, standard treatment for wounded Edens. The liquid carried vital nutrients directly into the bloodstream, giving the Plague healing something to work with.

  He grabbed his tranquilizer gun and PW5 pistol and roamed the area around the ship’s nuclear reactor and power plant, doping everyone he could find. There wasn’t much else he could do, unless he wanted to attempt to control the power installation himself. He barely knew enough to shut it down safely; no way he could do Harres’ job, which was supposed to include exerting some control over ship’s electrical systems, controlling the power feeds to the helm, the ballistic missiles, the torpedoes, communications – anything that might be used against them.

  Muzik took off his tunic, balled it up and slid it gently under Harres’ ear as he lay sideways on the deck. There was a sickening depression, a dent in the back of his head, deformed by swelling and the pulsing of blood. He keyed his microphone.

  “Muzik here. Harres is down and alive, but I’m not sure for how long. If the Doc is handy, send him down to the power plant, deck three. We still need to sweep the ship for more crew and dope them.”

  Back by the air processor Jill grabbed Doc in response, steering him down ladders and along passageways until they found the Major and Harres.

  The Corpsman immediately dropped to his knees, rolling out his medkit and muttering. He palpated the tall man’s skull, then said, “I’m going to have to trepan. Craniotomy. His skull is healing in a position pressing on the brain. Let’s get him to the infirmary. Infirmary! Now!”

  Suddenly Fitzhugh became a figure of authority instead of an absentminded technician. Jill and Muzik immediately lifted Harres up to carry him to the medical space. It was tiny, with just one bedlike platform bunk that pulled down from the bulkhead, but at least it had a mattress and there was a concentration of medical supplies in nearby drawers and cabinets.

  Doc had them place Harres face down, his long legs hanging off the end of the bunk. He pushed pads under the wounded man's noggin and ordered Muzik, “Hold his head, please, very still. This should be routine but it won’t be pleasant. I’m going to cut through his skull and pull this piece back, then replace it in a position that does not press on the brain. He should be awake in an hour or two and all healed in a day.”

  Muzik reported this over the tactical radio, trying not to look at the Doc working for fear of losing his last meal. Funny that violence doesn’t bother me but surgery turns my stomach.

  Then everyone heard Kelley’s voice come over the net.

  “Fire in the hole.”

  ***

  Spooky moved quickly and silently down the passageway. He felt very uncomfortable and exposed by the complete lack of maneuvering room, the close confines of the underwater steel tube they inhabited. He had stepped over several unconscious crewmen. Behind him he heard the hiss of the others pumping tranquilizer into each of them.

  He’d had no choice but to shoot a couple more, and the noise might have alerted anyone still conscious. There was nothing for it but to push onward, hoping the control room was not sealed off and forted up.

  Following behind, Bitzer carried the trank gun in one hand, a PW5 Needleshock pistol in the other. Then came Kelley with his PW10, and Alkina brought up the rear, pistol in hand.

  Spooky heard the popgun sound of a PW5 behind him. It fired a cartridge smaller than a .22; most of the noise came from the needle passing Mach one as it left the barrel. He looked back, saw Alkina pointing her weapon through a hatchway to the right. He didn’t stop.

  Not until the closed watertight door. The team pressed up against the bulkhead around the rim. Kelley tried the dogs, the locking handles and the wheel. No luck. It was secured from the inside. Several inches of thick steel, it was designed to keep out the pressures of the deep in case of compartment failure, and now it was keeping the team out.

  The Colonel slid a flexible tube out of his cargo pocket, put on his VR glasses, and carefully raised the end of the optical probe over the lip of the hatch’s small vision port. The tiny camera transmitted the view to his glasses, and he saw figures moving inside the darkened control center. He thought he detected a certain tension in their stances that indicated they knew something was wrong, but the screen was so tiny and the resolution was inadequate in the variable light. All he knew for sure was that the hatch was closed tight. “Kelley, how do we get it open?” The thick barrier prevented anyone from hearing their low conversation.

  The PA system came to life abruptly. “Now here this, all sections report status immediately.”

  Kelley waited for the announcement to end, then replied, “You can’t, if they don’t open it. It’s deliberately manual. There’s no override.”

  “How about cutting through the floor or ceiling?”

  “Their ceiling is the sail – the conning tower – the only way to get through there is externally. From below…sure, with time. But it would be obvious what we were doing.”

  “I don’t believe they have any weapons – perhaps a pistol – so it hardly matters if they know. What else can they do?” Colonel Nguyen’s eyes were intense, inquiring.

  “Fire off the missiles or torpedoes? Drive the boat into the ocean floor…maybe sink it? Come up to radio depth and send a message? We can’t let them think of something. And in less than an hour the un-tranked crewmen will be waking up, and they’ll be confused and unhappy.”

  “Then you have to blow it.”

  “It’s going to be ugly. Maybe deadly.”

  Everyone winced except Alkina, who just looked down at the deck, as if avoiding the thought.

  “Just do your best not to kill anyone.”

  Kelley quickly began laying out charges, tools, detonator, wires, blasting caps in their no-static covers. Everyone else mo
ved back and stationed themselves to cover all the entrances.

  Spooky opened up a pouch and took out two grenades: one flash-bang, one sleep gas. Both of them – in fact, almost all FC weapons – had the latest Eden Plague incorporated in them, in hopes of exposing whomever they were used on. Every infected enemy was a loss for them and a gain for the Free Communities.

  He shook his head and thought to himself how foolish the Big Three were – desperate to hold on to their superpower status, but all they could do was fight a bloody rearguard action; watch their people trickle away and their economies stagger along with no growth as the Free Communities and the Neutral States rapidly rebuilt.

  “Ready.” It had only taken him seven minutes. Now the hatch was ringed with an array of shaped charges designed to cut through the closing bars of the hatch and blow it off its hinges, all without killing those inside.

  He hoped.

  Spooky gave it about fifty-fifty to work. “Wait,” he said, going to check at the hatch port. This time he raised his head to look with the naked eye, not concerned with the slight chance he would be noticed.

  He could see three men. None of them were nearby. Now was as good a time as any. He scuttled back to cover with the rest then gave Kelley the signal to go.

  Kelley called the traditional phrase for ‘triggering an explosion now’ over the radio net. “Fire in the hole.”

  The noise of the shaped charges was deafening in the close confines of the submarine, even with their sound-cancelling electronic earbuds. The vibration and concussive shock transmitted not only though the air but through the metal and the very bodies of the team. If they had not been bolstered by the Plague, they might have been incapacitated.

  The watertight door flew off its hinges into the control room, its dogging-points cut by the superheated explosives. The temperature of both rooms climbed ten degrees from the blast.

  Spooky tossed the sleep gas grenade in and then the flash-bang. As soon as it exploded he moved in, immediately angling rightwards to get out of the death funnel of the doorway. He circled the foggy room, ensuring he breathed in through the nose in the dense soporific gas.

  Kelley came through next and circled left. A shot rang out from the fog, then two more, the hard cracks of a Navy service weapon. Fortunately that was all they were likely to have; a submerged boat was the last place anyone would expect to have a firefight.

  Unfortunately one of the bullets ricocheted off something solid and struck Kelley in the upper jaw, shattering several teeth and knocking him unconscious. He dropped like a marionette with its strings cut.

  Spooky crouched and loosed one burst from his P90 in the direction of the shots, then another. He heard a thud and a groan; as he duckwalked along the perimeter of the control room he came upon the shooter, a Master Chief wearing a protective mask, holding a military standard 9mm pistol. The filters had shielded him from the sleep gas; the colonel pulled the mask off and shot him with a trank.

  “Open all the doors! Get this place aired out,” Nguyen called, then spotted Kelley and his shattered face. “Doc, we’re going to need you up here as soon as you can.”

  “Just as soon as I stick Harres’ skull back on, okay sir?” Doc muttered something about “a little too much fun here,” then fell silent.

  As soon as the control room cleared, they tranked the other two men lying there – the ship’s captain and the executive officer. Alkina reached down to feel around underneath the captain’s tunic, coming up with nothing but dog tags on a chain. “No key.”

  “They didn’t have time to get them out of the safes. Bitzer –” Spooky glanced around, seeing the sub driver already sitting at the helm – “good, what’s the status?”

  “Depth is five hundred five feet, sir. Inertial navigation is green and we can head for Fiji as soon as we dump the mini.”

  “Just get us moving away from here, slow and quiet, before that other submersible shows up.” Spooky switched on his UWB mike. “Whoever is not otherwise engaged please come up to the control room and help carry Kelley down to the infirmary.”

  “Roger, on my way.” Repeth slung her weapon, running up the ladder and along the passageway to the control room.

  “You two ladies take Kelley down, please,” Spooky ordered politely.

  Alkina’s nostrils flared for a moment, then she smiled slightly and shrugged. She reached for Kelley’s legs, leaving the heavier upper body to the Marine. “One, two, three, up.”

  The two women carried Kelley’s dead weight awkwardly down to the infirmary. Repeth had to perform a fireman’s carry to get him down the ladder, a difficult and time-consuming operation. When they finally got Kelley to the medical space, they saw Major Muzik and Doc standing over Harres, looking pleased.

  Doc said, “Excellent job, if I do say so myself. Damn, what have we here? Put him on the deck, I don’t want to move Harres yet. Ugh, looks like the bullet entered his cheek here, took out some teeth and bone, then exited the other side. Flesh wounds healing nicely…hand me that locking forceps. No, the locking forceps. Yes, that one. Got to get this broken tooth out, it’s knocked all sideways…scalpel please. Thank you…” He deftly pulled and cut, swabbed and packed.

  Alkina looked expectantly at Muzik and Repeth. “The gas will be wearing off soon. Shouldn’t you two clear the rest of the boat? I am sure there are several spaces that haven’t been checked, and everyone should be tranked.” At their hesitation, she smiled faintly, an odd unnatural thing. “It’s all right, I’ll assist here if he needs anything.”

  “Right. Good idea. Let’s go, Sergeant.” Muzik led off.

  “That’s Gunnery Sergeant, sir.” Repeth opened doors and hatches, clearing tiny spaces one by one.

  “Sorry, you know I was Army.” He found a groggy sailor, tranked him

  “Can’t all be the best, sir.”

  He snorted. “You got that right. How were your last hand-to-hand scores? Or your bench?”

  “I don’t remember, sir; how was your run time? Or your range qual?”

  “Ouch, okay, I yield.” He grinned at her, but she didn’t smile back. Touchy…

  “Hey, here’s the galley. That’s the chow hall to you Army types. Something’s cooking.” They moved into the food preparation area and turned off the electric cooking appliances, sampling the simmering food as they did it. Some kind of beef stew. Jill futilely wished it was Rick along with her instead of Muzik, if only so she wouldn't have to keep looking at the Major's annoyingly handsome and cheerful face.

  -7-

  Chairman Markis asked, “Millie, could you put this away, and bring Rick up with you?” ‘This’ was an old-fashioned laptop without any capability to transmit or transfer data. It was inconvenient, but very secure.

  Cassandra Johnstone waited until her daughter had left with the laptop before speaking. “Bringing me here is bad tradecraft, DJ.”

  “I know, but I wanted to talk to all three of you personally before I went ahead with the proposal.”

  “You already know what I think.”

  “You think I shouldn’t risk it; but there has to be some attempt to re-open normal relations with the Big Three, especially with the North Americans. The EP started in North America in the popular mind, even if it was a Soviet creation. The United Governments of North America is still the largest superpower.”

  “These dinosaurs will eventually collapse under their own weight, just like the first Soviets.”

  “Even if I was certain of that – hell, look how long North Korea’s lasted – I’m not willing to wait. We have to make some kind of peace.”

  “Once the nuclear threshold was breached, they got to use the big stick on whoever didn’t have one. How are you going to get them to give that up for good?”

  “The Nuclear Concord has held. They haven’t risked an atomic strike in over a year. Even their own people were getting tired of the images of horror we broadcast past their censorship. Their consciences might not be EP-enhanced, but the common peo
ple have them, and they are getting sick of the oppression and brutality of their own government. Americans especially are not the type to accept this kind of tyranny for long.”

  There came a knock at the door.

  “Come in Rick, Millie, sit down. How is the cyber attack going?”

  Rick smiled and took a seat, his sister next to him. “Quite well, I think. We’ve managed to crash a number of their servers, and we shut down some sites. They will think they headed off a tremendous threat to their arsenal.”

  “Did we pinpoint the leak, Cassie?”

  “Yes we did. It was in Farnsworth’s office, as we suspected. A Psycho, well-trained. We’ll have to update and refine the psych tests and polygraphs; this one counterfeited the ones we gave.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes. Funny thing about narcissists – they won’t usually kill themselves to protect their masters. So the Aussies get another one.” Her tone was disapproving.

  “They can have them for all I care.”

  Cassandra frowned. She considered this one of Markis’ blind spots; he had blossomed as a leader and politician, but he still tended to stick his head in the sand when it came to certain problems, or at least to grasp at simplistic solutions. So when the Australians had volunteered to take all the Psychos in Free Communities off their hands, to be held in special prisons far, far into the Outback, he had agreed immediately.

  Over her objections.

  Something about the arrangement made her profoundly uneasy. She told herself that Australia was a Free Community with Edens in charge, and that they were fundamentally incapable of perpetrating atrocities. But she also knew that human beings had an amazing ability to fool themselves, lying to themselves, convincing themselves of the most outlandish things, and truly believing them. And true belief could always threaten a conscience, no matter how robust. If you truly believed infidels were condemned by your god, or your enemies were subhuman, then killing them wasn’t very hard, especially if you didn’t have to do it personally.