The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Curtik looked around. Broadway looked busy: robocars, electric streetcars, and plenty of pedestrians heading out for a drink or dinner after work. Perhaps New Yorkers were less concerned about the Susquehanna Virus these days, now that it was being steadily eradicated and was no longer as deadly as before. Curtik accessed a vid of the place from a few years back and realized it was far less crowded now than it used to be. Still damn busy though.

  He deleted the vid and activated the conference setting on his implant, bringing his father, Jeremiah Jones, into the conversation. “How’s the drone working, Pops?”

  Jeremiah said, “Looks like he’s heading to his club. He feels safe there.”

  “Street’s quiet,” said Curtik, “I think this is a bust. The guy’s a zero.”

  Jeremiah said, “He isn’t what he appears to be.”

  “There’s nothin’ out of place. Standard security measures from what I can see. If Fowler is really a bad guy, shouldn’t we just ice him? All this cloak and dagger stuff is boring. Taking him out would be a helluva lot more fun.”

  “Just keep your eyes open.”

  “Okay,” said Zora, “I’m in.”

  Two dark SUVs drew up to the Natural Hybrids building and stopped. Eight large security guards jumped out, leaving the doors open behind them as they ran to the entrance.

  “Okay, I apologize, Popster,” Curtik said. “Slight problem, Zora. Eight hostiles coming your way.”

  “Not a good time, Curtik. I’m still setting up.”

  “Take them out,” Jeremiah said. “But don’t kill them if you don’t have to.”

  Curtik snorted as he unholstered his Las-pistol and sprinted across the street, the dress slowing him down. Son of a bitch! “Why didn’t you tell me not to wear a dress?” He didn’t bother to dodge the approaching vehicles, knowing their autopilots would slow or swerve to avoid him.

  “We did,” Zora said.

  “Okay. How come you weren’t convincing?”

  “Because you’re an obstinate fool?”

  “Agh.” He lifted the dress with his right hand. “Here comes Julianna, fellas. CINTEP’s comin’ to get you.”

  He reached the door, dropped the dress and punched the plas-glass with his robotic right hand. The glass shattered and he ran inside.

  A security guard had already begun to move toward him. With his left hand, Curtik shot the man with a purple pulse—a high-stun setting. Another security guard fired at him: a red, killing pulse, the bastard. Not just some ordinary security guard. So this Fowler really was somebody to be reckoned with. Curtik dove to his left and shot the guard in the chest with another purple pulse. He fired twice more, at two more guards who had ducked behind pillars. The other four had entered the elevator. Its doors shut as Curtik fired at it.

  He slid behind the reception counter, the dress bunching around his legs, as the two remaining security guards alternated firing at him, their laser pulses sizzling as they punched holes in the plas-wood. The counter began to burn, giving off an acrid stench, activating the sprinkler system in the ceiling, which showered him with cold water. Dense smoke billowed around him.

  “Four coming your way, Zora,” Curtik said. “I couldn’t stop ’em. I’m kinda pinned down here at the moment.”

  “Abort the mission,” said Jeremiah. “Get out of there now.”

  “No, I’m almost done,” Zora replied.

  “Plow it,” Curtik said. He dropped to the floor and used the infrared setting of his implant to search through the smoke for the guards. They remained behind their pillars, but their hands were exposed so they could fire at him.

  “Help’s on the way,” said Jeremiah. “It’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

  “What kind of help?” Curtik asked.

  “Stun grenade on a mini-drone,” said Jeremiah. “Keep firing at them. Zora, get out of there now.”

  Zora didn’t reply. Curtik hoped she was on her way out. He fired two quick pulses, one at each guard’s exposed hand, and grinned when he heard two screams. I am the absolute best. The king of the jungle! Yes, they’d switch their weapons to their off hands, but they stood no chance against him now.

  “Stay down,” Jeremiah said. “Five seconds.”

  Curtik thought he heard the whine of a drone and pulled himself into a ball, covering his head with his hands as the stun grenade exploded.

  Curtik jumped to his feet. Zora, he sent, where the hell are you?

  “Fifth floor. I’m taking fire,” Zora replied via her interface.

  Curtik again lifted the dress with his right hand and sprinted for the stairs, firing stun pulses at the two guards as he passed, feeling satisfaction as they dropped to the ground. He flung the door open and pounded up the stairs to the fifth floor, taking them three at a time, flying around corners, laughing at the thrill of the chase.

  He reached the fifth floor and yanked the door open. The four security guards had taken up position left and right, high and low, hiding behind doors to minimize their profiles, and they alternated firing red pulses at Fowler’s office doorway. Their pulses had started the sprinkler system up here as well.

  I’m here, Curtik sent.

  “What’s your plan?” Zora asked.

  Plan, what plan? I just want to shoot people. Curtik fired pulses at the guards, who were too well concealed to offer any targets.

  “Shoot the wall to your left,” Jeremiah said.

  “That should confuse them,” said Curtik. “It confuses the hell out of me.”

  “Just do it. I need a six-inch hole. I’ve got another drone headed your way. It’ll be there in a few seconds. Zora, take out the lights. When the stun grenade hits, get out of there.”

  Curtik fired a long red pulse at the wall, opening a hole to the outside. Then he ducked into the stairwell again and waited for the bang.

  “This was supposed to be a simple job,” Zora said, “not a shootout.”

  I know, Curtik sent. Isn’t it great?

  Two seconds later he heard an explosion.

  Come on, he sent to Zora.

  An old black woman emerged from Fowler’s office, Las-pistol in hand. Zora, wearing the same neo-skin mask she’d worn in London. And trousers, damn her. She sprinted to the stairwell and took the steps down two at a time.

  Curtik stayed behind her on the way down, not out of any gallantry but because he thought he might trip in the dress and wanted to have Zora cushion the blow if he did so.

  “Who is this Fowler guy anyway?” Zora asked.

  “Just a seed salesman, obviously,” Curtik replied. “With a few pet pit bulls.”

  As Zora continued past the first floor to the basement, Curtik said, “Where you goin’?”

  “I’m not going out the front door after that.”

  “We’re wearing masks,” Curtik said. “They’ll never identify us. Besides, they already got vids of us.”

  “We got the bugs installed. Let’s just get out of here.” She ran to the parking ramp exit on the back side of the building, not far from the Civic Center, and jogged up to the sidewalk, slowing to a walk as she neared the top. Curtik stayed two steps behind her.

  Jeremiah said, “I’ll be there in thirty seconds.”

  Zora frowned. “But you’re in Washington. How can you—”

  “I left Washington two hours ago. I suspected you might have trouble.”

  “You don’t trust us,” Curtik said.

  “It’s not that. I just didn’t think Fowler’s office would be as easy as the Intel indicated. “I’m in the black sedan to your right.”

  The sedan stopped in front of Curtik and Zora, its rear door opening. Curtik gestured for Zora to precede him, then followed her inside. The door closed automatically as the sedan sped off.

  Jeremiah swiveled the front seat around to face them, letting the autopilot dr
ive the car. He looked ancient, wrinkles heavy around the eyes and forehead and even his mouth. When he caught sight of Curtik wearing the Julianna mask, his face sagged in sorrow.

  Curtik ripped the mask off as Zora gasped at the change in Jeremiah’s condition. Neither Curtik nor Zora had seen him in over a month. They had received this assignment from Lendra so Curtik had no idea how much Jeremiah’s condition had deteriorated in such a short time. His hazel eyes seemed almost dull in the dim light and his body looked shrunken, testament to all the punishment it had absorbed over the years. Even the simple act of sitting in the moving car seemed to pain him.

  What kind of hell must he endure every day?

  Time to lighten the mood.

  “No ’atta boy?” Curtik said as he squirmed his way out of the dress, revealing skin-tight pants and a black T-shirt. “No well done, ma’am?”

  Jeremiah smiled briefly. “Did you get the bugs planted?” he asked Zora.

  Zora removed her mask and nodded.

  “Good work, both of you.”

  “Who is that guy?” Zora asked, taking Curtik’s cue and ignoring Jeremiah’s infirmity.

  “Yeah,” Curtik said. “His security ain’t too shabby.”

  “He’s part of the network,” said Jeremiah. “One of the people pulling the strings, making things work the way they’re supposed to.”

  “What are you talking about?” Curtik said.

  “How do you think they get people to accept their place in society? People have to be conditioned to want to keep the world the way it is.”

  “I still don’t see how he fits into that.”

  “Simple,” Zora said. “They put additives in the food, don’t they?”

  Jeremiah nodded. “Subtle changes. Not enough to program people’s minds. Just enough to make them more susceptible to other means of conditioning them.”

  “Ah,” Curtik said. “I got a question. Won’t old Edwin just have the bugs removed or shut down the office or something to avoid the bugging?”

  “Hopefully,” said Jeremiah.

  Chapter 2

  As the ore transport vessel MineStar 7 sank toward the surface of Mars, Doug Robinson looked over at Quark. It had been a year since Quark had been in the company of his fellow Escala—genetically engineered humans designed to thrive on Mars. Doug had been thinking a lot about how they’d met a few years ago in that shoot-out with the government in Minnesota. He liked Quark and was happy that the Escala was finally getting to join his own kind. He looked more serene than Doug had ever seen him.

  Doug felt excited for his own reasons. He was about to land on Mars! A black man from a bad neighborhood in Minneapolis about to do what few astronauts had ever done. He didn’t know how Devereaux got permission for him to travel with Quark and he didn’t care. He was finally going to meet his daughter Celestia in person. She lived with her mother Zeriphi in the New Dawn colony. Doug had impregnated Zeriphi three years ago at her request, but she had never loved him. He thought he loved her once. But she had made it clear she would never love him in return. For her, it always came back to Zod.

  How much did Celestia know about Zod? She and Doug never talked about Zod when they exchanged vid messages. And although Celestia called Doug Daddy, Doug wondered if she knew what that word meant. Did she consider him her father? Or was there someone on Mars taking that role? Or did it even matter? After the death of Zod in Minnesota, the Escala had shifted to a matriarchal society.

  The trip up had been a long six months, but at least he’d had the company of Quark and the miners who were on their way to their new posts. Doug had been forced to spend most of the trip in this one room, shielded from radiation to protect against cancer. Quark hadn’t been similarly constrained.

  Like the other Escala, he had been enhanced with the DNA of several species, one of which was an altered kineococcus radiotolerans bacterium that fed on radiation, so he had been free to move about the ship during the voyage.

  The miners, like Doug, had been forced to stay in a shielded area, but their quarters were much nicer. Doug visited their section of the ship a few times a day for meals and exercise. He got to know each of the miners a little, though he spent most of his time with the new foreman, Colin Enright, who questioned him at length about what it had been like to work for Walt Devereaux. Doug got the sense that Enright and the miners disapproved of Devereaux because of his atheism, but they never came out and said so. Still, after a few months, he found himself engaging with the miners less and less frequently, keeping to himself, perusing the ship’s vast library for vids on a great number of subjects. He grew tired of defending Devereaux to these backwards laborers.

  “How’re you doing?” Quark asked.

  “I’m fine,” he said, wondering if that was true.

  “Nervous?”

  “Why should I be?” Doug said. “Okay, I’m nervous. I’m about to land on another planet. And I’m not an Escala. I don’t know how I’m going to do up here. I don’t know how my body’s going to react. Two years is a long time to spend up here if things don’t go well.”

  Quark smiled. “You’ll manage.”

  The next transport ship wouldn’t arrive for twenty-six months, the next time Earth and Mars would be at their closest orbital points, so if things didn’t go well with Zeriphi or Celestia, it would be a lonely two years.

  “What about you?” Doug asked, teasing. “You nervous?”

  Quark shrugged. He still wore his bushy black beard, and his shaggy hair formed a ragged halo around his head, reminding Doug why he had been called Cookie Monster back at the Tessamae Shelter. He almost didn’t fit in his seat, seven feet tall and three hundred Earth-pounds, most of it muscle.

  “Actually, yes,” Quark replied.

  “Why? You’re going home.”

  “In a way, but Mars is still going to feel like an alien world. The simulations won’t match the reality. Plus, I haven’t seen Quekri in over a year. And I miss Devereaux.”

  “I miss him too,” Doug said.

  The great Walt Devereaux, now alive only as a robot (albeit one that looked like he used to look), his mind encapsulated in an organic computer, had ordered Quark to Mars, where he belonged. “There’s no body left for you to serve,” Devereaux had said in front of Doug, as if he wanted a witness. “My human remains are mere molecules and my computer self is beyond even your remarkable abilities to protect. We’ll stay in touch. I can contact you just as easily on Mars as I can on Earth. There’s no reason for you to be apart from Quekri any longer.”

  Quark had nodded before turning away, his eyes glistening with moisture. As far as Doug knew, Quark hadn’t been alone with Devereaux since that day. He wondered if Quark felt betrayed. Doug felt abandoned at times, now that Devereaux no longer needed him to be his communications liaison.

  After Devereaux told Doug he could choose from several job offers, Doug had asked if there was a way for him to visit his daughter instead, and Devereaux had somehow made it happen.

  “Better put your Mars suit on,” Quark said as he reached for his. “We’re about to land.”

  MineStar7 touched down so softly Doug almost didn’t feel it. He would have thought it was just a slight bump had Quark not said anything. That was the beauty of robotic flight—near perfection. He felt the pull of Mars’ gravity, lighter than Earth’s and even lighter than the ship’s induced gravity had been during the flight up here.

  Doug donned his Mars suit—a gift from Devereaux—sealing the helmet tight against the collar. The green icon in the upper right corner of the visor indicated the suit was secure. He took a deep breath as he prepared to step onto another world.

  “Let’s go,” Quark said, turning toward the doorway. He spun the airlock, swung the door open and stepped out into the hallway.

  The forty-eight miners were already there, waiting for the hatch to be released, Enr
ight in the lead. When the door to the outside finally opened, they marched out onto the surface of Mars, onto the reddish sand. A short way off, through a reddish cloud of dust that settled slowly to the ground, Doug could see the MineStar colony, the pods where the miners would be staying. Beyond that stood tall mountains. The orange-red sky looked odd compared to the blue of Earth and much brighter than Doug would have guessed it to be.

  He knew that the New Dawn settlement was only a few kilometers away, but he couldn’t see it from here, perhaps because of the dust. He’d heard there was a little tension between the miners and the Escala and wondered why the Escala had chosen to settle so close to the mining colony. A whole planet to choose from and they picked this spot. Why? Oh, yes. Something about the geological formations in the area.

  A group of miners stood outside wearing Mars suits, waiting to enter the vessel, apparently eager to leave. Doug saw that there were less than twenty. He’d heard that a number of miners had died in the past year, victims of several diseases caused by the increased radiation present on Mars, but more than half? Had that many miners really been lost?

  He stared out the hatchway at the MineStar colony until Quark took him by the elbow and led him down to the surface. Another planet. As he stepped onto its surface, orange dust shrouded his feet. He felt like a voyager, like an explorer, even though he was far from the first to set foot on this world. After the confines of the ship, the place seemed gargantuan, a giant desert of reddish-brown rocks.

  Quark looked off to his left and Doug followed his line of sight. In the distance, he made out a half-dozen large figures walking toward them, all wearing Mars suits, one of them limping slightly. Escala.

  Quark turned to the miners and said, “Thanks for the lift, folks.”

  Then he clapped Doug on the back and strode off toward the Escala. Doug waved goodbye to the miners. No doubt he’d be seeing them again once everyone was settled—the miners in their pods and Doug with the Escala.

  He followed Quark toward the New Dawn settlement, noticing again how light on his feet he felt, the gravity here being a little more than a third that of Earth.