The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “Missing?” Jay-Edgar asked.

  “The pattern is wrong. It should be all strategic targets or all civilian ones, maximizing the terror. This blend is . . . perhaps Zora’s not completely in control up there.” Elias put his head in his hands.

  “Are you okay?” Dr. Hassan asked.

  “It had to be done,” Elias answered. “There was no other way.”

  Dr. Hassan and Jay-Edgar stared at him, as if unsure how to reply.

  “We’re destroying our world,” Elias continued. “Such a fragile place. Such fragile people. We’re committing unspeakable acts of violence upon each other, becoming more barbaric rather than less, refining our tools of death so we can more accurately hunt down and kill our enemies. All of us are to blame. You, me, the President, even Manyara.”

  “Manyara?” Dr. Hassan said.

  “We all did it by refusing to condemn it. You see that, don’t you?”

  “Of course, sir,” Jay-Edgar said. “You did what had to be done.”

  “I wonder how harshly I’ll be judged.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind.” Elias hopped out of bed, his joints flexible, his muscles strong. He felt fifty again. While the Earth deteriorated, its defenses dying, his body revitalized itself. The fountain of youth swam in his bloodstream.

  * * *

  Shaking with laughter at the memory of Eli’s slurred words, Curtik fired his Las-cannon. He ignored the targets Zora had designated, leaving those for Wee Willie and Aspen, instead going after populated areas with ess sounds in their names. With each hit his delight grew. “Thufferin Thingapore! Thilly old Ithtanbul. Thayonara, Thithily! Whoopth, I almotht mithed Pathcagoula, Mithithippi. How thad.”

  Curtik’s boys shouted encouragement, calling out targets for him to hit next. Too bad Benn and Addam had guard duty. They would have enjoyed the killing. Instead they’d have to experience it through their implants. But it wasn’t the same. There was nothing like a good kill to bring out the thrumming delight at the center of him. He glanced over at Zora. The bitch just didn’t have a sense of humor. She stood next to Pappolini Jeremiah in his wheelchair while Phan and Shiloh trained their Las-rifles on the Papster. Lendra and Devereaux—God Himself—stood to the other side of Pappy. God Himself never took his eyes off Curtik, ignoring the carnage on the screens. Let him look. Curtik didn’t care as long as Zora didn’t pull him off the Las-cannon.

  “Come on, Thora,” Curtik said, “thith ith fun.” He winked at Pappy and God Himself, who just stared back without saying a word. They hadn’t spoken since the attacks started.

  “You’re nutth, Curtik,” Wee Willie said. “But you’re right. Itth fun to talk like thith.”

  All the boys joined in the mockery, lisping at each other. But the girls kept an eye on Zora. And most of them only smiled or giggled—waiting for the bitch to give them permission to laugh. She was too damn hard on them—too hard on everybody. Life should be fun. Enjoy the kills—they might not last.

  Zora shook her head. “You’re hitting far fewer targets than Wee Willie and Aspen. Don’t you think you should concentrate on the people who can hurt us instead of innocent civilians?”

  “Innothent thivilianth?” Curtik said. “I thought we were thuppothed to terrorithe them.”

  “That’s why I haven’t stopped you so far,” Zora said. “But I don’t want you running your Las-cannon dry. We need to maintain a charge of at least fourteen perthent.”

  “Perthent!” Curtik laughed so hard he nearly fell over. All the cadets howled with delight at that. Zora smiled and Curtik realized she hadn’t made a mistake after all. She’d deliberately misspoken. Clever, clever bitch.

  Zora’s smile tapered off. “Just remember we need that reservoir of power. Okay?”

  “Yeth, ma’am,” Curtik said as he put his hand to his forehead. “I thalute you. Hey, I’ve got an idea. Letth call Eli. I want to hear him talk again. Only from now on letth call him Thylvethter—you know—like the cartoon character.”

  “Thylvether!” Wee Willie hooted. Curtik’s boys doubled over, slapping themselves on the legs, poking each other, even poking the girls, some of whom broke out into actual laughter.

  God Himself continued to stare at Curtik, doing his best to ruin the fun. Why didn’t the scary old bastard leave him alone? At least Lendra provided some pleasure. Her face was pinched, her hands clenched, her body shaking, which gave Curtik an ecstatic warmth in the pit of his stomach. Then he noticed Pappy staring at the Earth with a stone face, his expression unreadable, as if he didn’t care. Curtik followed his eye out the plas-glass ceiling toward Earth. No sign of the laser strikes was visible from here. The planet continued to spin, looking like some giant marble against a background of black velvet, little pinpricks of white light visible behind it. Curtik wished Pappy was down there. He wanted to kill Jeremiah most of all.

  Pulling his attention back to God Himself, Curtik sprang to his feet and yelled, “Boo!”

  Both God Himself and Lendra jumped and Curtik laughed. “Thcared you, didn’t I?” Neither Aspen nor Wee Willie joined his laughter this time. Only a handful of cadets—the ones Curtik terrorized—bothered to laugh. The tension built as Curtik returned to his seat. Damn, it was just a joke. Maybe God Himself needed to vanish. If Zora continued to let him wander around freely, he might accidentally find his way out an airlock. Imagine killing the greatest human of all.

  “Down to thirty perthent,” Aspen said. She looked at Curtik with a slight smile before catching God Himself’s eye and turning serious. “Enough for a couple dozen strikes per Las-cannon before we reach the fourteen percent mark.”

  “Make them count,” Zora said, feeding coordinates to Curtik and the others through her implant. “Only high-quality targets from here on out. I mean it, Curtik. No more fooling around.”

  “Okay, okay. I got a little carried away.”

  “I don’t want them to be able to retaliate. And if we waste all our ammunition on unimportant targets, they’ll mount some sort of attack against us.”

  “Bring ’em on,” Curtik said. “We gotta fight ’em sooner or later.”

  “Just do your job,” Zora said. “Take out the targets I’ve indicated.”

  Pappy finally spoke: “Are we done here?”

  Zora turned to face him. “Ah, Jeremiah. How do you feel? Do you hate me now?”

  Pappy shook his head. “You’re doing what you were programmed to do. I’ve killed before too. Blown up things . . . people. The only difference is one of degree. But I’ve seen enough.”

  Zora bent over and grabbed his hand, her eyes focused on his. “What would it take for you to hate me? How many more would I have to kill?” She turned her head toward Lendra. “What if I killed Witchy Poo?”

  Pappy grimaced as he shrugged. “I don’t think I could ever hate you.”

  Curtik said, “You hate me though, right?”

  “Sorry,” Pappy answered. “I feel sorry for you and I wish I could help you, but I suspect you’re beyond help.”

  Curtik rose to his feet and took a step forward, the urge to kill overwhelming him. He brushed someone’s hand aside but found himself surrounded by girls—Zora’s pets. Somehow he had to figure a way to take control.

  Curtik raised his hands and backed into his chair. “Good one,” he said with a laugh. “Got me there. Tweaked my buttons good. Love you too, Papster.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The motion of the jet-copter gave Captain Windol Payne an overwhelming urge to urinate. He grabbed the chem-urinal, unzipped his coveralls and used it, cleansing his system of deactivated nanobots. After zipping up, Payne took a long drink of nutri-water. Important to stay hydrated if he didn’t want to cramp up. He found it hard to believe that it wasn’t the pseudos who’d taken over the Moon. He still thought of them as abominations, even though he was no longer programmed to hat
e them.

  He remembered kidnapping two kids for the cadet program, years ago, back when he was under Richard Carlton’s spell. He’d only done what Carlton ordered, what he’d been compelled to do. But he still felt tremendous guilt over his actions. Payne particularly remembered one cute little blond girl. He couldn’t recall her name. She’d been living in Iowa—an easy target. Payne had taken her after she got off the bus. Dressed like a police officer, he’d told her that he was taking her to her parents. Such a trusting, innocent face: when she discovered he had lied, she cried for only a short time before staring at him with a wisdom beyond her years. He wondered what became of that five-year-old, shrugged that thought aside.

  A helium balloon.

  Payne shook his head. Shooting down a Las-cannon from a balloon: were they kidding? At least they were giving him a particle beam cannon instead of a bow and arrow. There was a time he’d have sworn he couldn’t miss any target he aimed at with a particle beam cannon. Then came Minnesota and Jeremiah Jones—another pseudo.

  By God, he was fast! Faster than anyone Payne had seen before or since. Were the kids that fast too? Faster? Hard to believe. Nanobot technology made sense. It supplemented the body’s own systems—a pure enhancement that left one fully human. But the idea of inserting animal DNA into people struck him as obscene, no matter how many times they told him that the only real difference between human and animal DNA was which genes were activated.

  He shivered, feeling cold for the first time in years: no nanobots to regulate his metabolism. Even such details as fine motor control were now exclusively in his fingers: no assistance from nano-connectors.

  Payne felt empty. He volunteered for this mission because the guilt of his actions had been building to an almost intolerable burden. And he felt lonely after being cut off from his men for the past year. He needed to redeem himself. Maybe, if he survived, he could even return to active duty. Once an Elite Ops, always an Elite Ops.

  Below him, in the waning light of day, what used to be the CIA’s headquarters in Langley was mostly charred ground and rubble. A crater, wide and shallow, stretched over an area of several hundred meters, demonstrating the amazing power of Las-cannon technology. The weapons could either send narrow beams of unprecedented power, or wider, less-potent rays that still unleashed a destructive force almost without parallel—much more powerful than a particle beam cannon.

  The flight took half an hour. The view outside—a sunset of orange mellowing to pink and purple—was beautiful. Circling a small meadow, the pilot landed on a concrete pad next to a metal hangar, where General Horowitz stood waiting under a floodlight with a short black man and an Elite Ops trooper. Payne felt a pang of self-pity.

  He stepped out of the jet-copter, which immediately took off, vanishing into the growing darkness. The pilot and copilot had said not a word to him on the way out. Payne approached the General and saluted, then recognized the armored trooper behind him as Adrian Lye, a former student, now the new commander of the Elite Ops.

  “General,” Payne said. “Adrian.”

  “Windol,” Lye replied, clapping Payne on the shoulder. “Good to see you. Thanks for volunteering. We need you.”

  “Captain,” General Horowitz said, gesturing to the short black man, “this is Ned Jefferson. He’ll be going up with you.”

  Payne looked the short man over. He wore a clean white shirt tucked into dark pants. His sneakers looked ancient in the dim lighting. Next to the heavily armored Elite Ops trooper and even General Horowitz, he looked tiny. His face had at least a week’s growth of gray hair on it. Otherwise his head was bald. He could be anywhere between fifty and eighty. Lean as a greyhound, his face was impassive as stone until he flashed Payne a smile, exposing bright white teeth.

  “Ned is one of the best balloonists in the country,” General Horowitz said.

  Payne said, “Does he know the mission?”

  “Yes,” General Horowitz said.

  “Am I in command, sir? Or is he?”

  Adrian said, “You’re a team, Windol. Ned will get you into the best position possible. You’ll take the shot. You leave as soon as we coordinate with two other teams—one in India and one in Spain. It has to be perfectly timed, so we hit all three Las-cannons at once. We won’t get a second opportunity. I’m in contact with Mukesh Mangeshkar and Pedro Castanos. They’re the equivalent of Elite Ops troopers in India and Spain. They’ll each be going up with a professional balloonist—some woman named Saronjini Bharanarrayan and a guy named Escobar Manolillo.”

  Ned Jefferson’s eyebrows lifted.

  “You know those people?” Payne asked.

  Jefferson shrugged. “Heard of Escobar,” he said in a raspy voice. “Never met him, but he’s a world-class balloon racer. Won the Paris-to-Beijing Race last year. Saronjini I know. She holds the world record for the highest elevation by a balloonist.”

  “How high is that?”

  “Thirty-one miles.”

  “And how high have you flown?”

  “Eighteen miles.”

  Payne turned to General Horowitz. “Aren’t the Las-cannons about 60,000 miles up?”

  “Approximately,” the general replied.

  Payne shook his head, stared at Adrian. “So I’m firing at a target 60,000 miles away in the middle of the night? What am I missing?”

  “If you can get up to forty miles, you’ll have almost no atmosphere to shoot through,” Adrian said. “So you’ll get almost no distortion or resistance. And with Mr. Jefferson’s fancy balloon, you should be able to get to nearly forty miles up, so your target will only be 59, 960 miles away. Plus, the Las-cannon puts out an electronic signal you’ll be able to track.”

  “Oh.” Payne flung up his arms. “Well, then it’s easy.”

  “We’ll be diverting the Las-cannons by firing a dozen XV4s at them,” General Horowitz said. “When the Las-cannon above you fires, you’ll be able to load the converter and lock onto its signal. Major Lye tells me the shot can be made.”

  “With all due respect,” Payne said. “Major Lye doesn’t have to make the shot.”

  Adrian took a step forward. “I did volunteer for the mission.”

  “I know, Adrian.” Payne lifted his hands in apology. “I’m just saying that it’s going to take one hell of a shot. And what if the Las-cannons don’t provide enough of a signal for the particle beam cannons to get a full lock? If we’re off even one degree in any direction, we could miss the Las-cannons completely.”

  “We picked you because you’re the best,” General Horowitz said.

  “Again, with all due respect,” Payne said, “I was the best when I was armored up. If I can’t get a strong signal, I’ll have to use manual override. The odds against hitting a target that far away . . . well, they’d be astronomical.”

  “Not with a scatter setting, full power,” Adrian said.

  “That would give me only one shot.”

  “Yes, but your odds of hitting it would be much better. At least fifty-fifty. Maybe sixty-forty with your skill.”

  “And with a scatter setting, even at full power, how much damage would I inflict? Would it be enough to destroy the Las-cannon?”

  “That’s an unknown,” General Horowitz conceded. “But it’s still our best shot.”

  Payne looked from General Horowitz to Adrian to Ned Jefferson, who had listened to the conversation quietly. Brave little man. Payne said, “And what happens afterwards?”

  “If you fail,” General Horowitz said, “I imagine you’ll be shot out of the sky, in which case you’ll have a,” he turned to Jefferson, “ten percent chance of survival?”

  Jefferson shrugged. “Near enough.”

  “So, hit the Las-cannon,” General Horowitz said, “and bring the balloon back down safely and we’ll pin a medal on you.”

  “Excuse me,” Jefferson said, “Got some work t
o do. What’s our ETD?”

  “Two hours, ten minutes,” Adrian said.

  “Right,” General Horowitz said. “Let’s go over the details, see if there’s anything we can do to improve our odds while Ned gets the balloon ready.”

  “Who is he really?” Payne asked.

  “An old friend,” General Horowitz said. “I’d trust him with my life.”

  For the next hour and a half, as night swallowed twilight, they discussed how they planned to coordinate the strikes. To avoid detection of the comm system, Payne and Ned Jefferson would be using a modified walkie-talkie to speak with Adrian, who would maintain a comm-link with the bases in India and Spain. General Horowitz would deploy the XV4s in three separate launches, timed so that they approached the Las-cannons just as the balloons reached their upper limits, forty miles up.

  Payne had already urinated one last time, then slipped into his pressurized suit and donned his parachute. He left his helmet off for the moment. Jefferson wore the same equipment, laughing as he struggled to fit his parachute over his suit.

  When the ground crew wheeled the balloon out from the hangar, the floodlight showed three balloons atop the basket, barely visible in the night. Did these people know how much a longshot this was? They certainly spoke optimistically enough. But then, Payne himself had done the same on more missions than he could remember. Never let the troops know you have doubts.

  Adrian approached Payne and held out his particle beam cannon. “I want you to use mine,” Adrian said. “It’s perfectly calibrated and balanced, fully charged.”

  “Thanks,” Payne replied. He snapped open the cannon, unloaded the converter and placed it in his pocket. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Good hunting,” General Horowitz said.

  Payne put his helmet on and climbed into the basket, where Jefferson already stood encased in his suit. Payne grabbed a handhold on the basket and waited for Adrian to give the go signal. Minutes ticked by. Payne studied the basket. Beside the helium tank was an electronic console. He and Jefferson had little room for themselves. When Adrian pointed at them, Jefferson released the balloon. It rose rapidly, the people on the ground shrinking. It was like being in an elevator. Payne’s stomach dropped only a little in response to the acceleration. Higher and higher they drifted into the blackness, moving east as they rose toward the Las-cannon.