Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (40 page)

“Odd,” Bane said. He twisted, feeling his old chitin creak. He was
ancient, blue from his age as much as the genetic engineering he'd undergone to
remake himself into the ultimate killer. The sheep called him Ole Blue, he let
them think that, there was pleasure in their not even knowing his true name.
He'd lost count of the tens of thousands he'd killed over the centuries. The
number was stored in his implants somewhere but he rarely gloated over the
figure, he preferred to replay the last moments of life of his victims. That he
treasured. It was what kept him going, kept him moving when time should have
robbed him of life long ago. Well that and the nanites throughout his body
keeping him fit and alive. He alone on this retched mud ball was immune to
whatever had befallen the sheep.

Could it be nanites? He wondered. It would be fun to watch the
sheep scrabble to save themselves. But not as much fun since he'd not been the
one to cause such misery.

He turned in a swirl of his duster. He had a payment to collect.
Spirits of space help the fool if he wasn't there to deliver it.

...*...*...*...*...

Irons came in to the meeting behind the tall doctor Ted Zane. Zane
had glasses and thinning hair despite being in his early thirties. He'd spotted
Irons immediately by the uniform and waved him on. The two men hadn't exchanged
a single word as they moved out.

The room was big, a council room, part training room, part board
room. On one wall behind the head of the table was a broken vid screen, on the
opposite wall was a painting. One long wall had a line of windows, the wall
where the door was had rows of lightly stained bookcases.

“This is slightly organized chaos, with a flavor of desperation
and panic,” Sprite commented doing her own observations. Papers and books were
strewn all over the desk, empty chairs and floor. Sticky coffee cups were
scattered in front of people. One nurse was hastily blotting up a spill on some
papers.

Irons eyed the group, he wasn't sure which was Richards. He didn't
have a lot to go off of, and the group in the back of the room were in a tight
knot talking animatedly about distribution of quarantine masks and gloves. He
turned away, he needed a moment of prep time anyway.

“You aren't that wrong Commander. We'll be lucky if we pull this
off,” Irons replied quietly as he nodded to the people in the room. Most
ignored him since he wasn't wearing a medical smock. He sized up the room and
spotted the screen behind the head of the table that would do.

When they came in most of the people were so wrapped up in their
own projects they ignored them. Ted headed to the knot at the back, patting
Irons on the shoulder in passing. Irons turned as someone in the outer office
closed the door behind him. He turned and dumped out all his pockets full of
chips. The sound of Velcro ripping made a few people look up in confusion.

A woman nearby opened her mouth to object but he ignored her. His
hands flashed as if on their own. He plugged some of the devices into a cluster
and then went over to an ancient LCD screen. It was broken, cracked diagonally
from left to right with a big cobweb near the center. It had sustained quite an
impact but for some reason it remained in place, most likely because the thing
had been built into the wall. Irons put his right hand onto the web and Proteus
went to work.

His free left hand punched through the brittle and most likely
ancient wood wall. He tore the pieces of paneling away until he had enough
clearance and then studied the contents within. He found the wires he wanted
and pulled them out.  Fortunately someone had been smart, the optical lines had
plenty of slack and were standard universal cables. He manually directed a
group of nanites in his left arm to splice the wires into the computer cluster
and then let the thing drop to hang there in the wall.

Behind him the room had grown silent. He turned to see all eyes on
him. He turned back as the screen changed. The crack visibly healed itself. A
woman gasped, unsure of what she was seeing. Another guy did a double take,
rubbing his eyes and then staring gape mouthed. It would have been humorous if
the situation wasn't so serious. After a moment the screen blinked on with a
self-test, and then Sprite was there looking out at them.

“Room, Lieutenant Commander Sprite, class four point one smart AI.
Sprite room. My name is Irons, Fleet Admiral of the Federation navy. I'm your
one shot at surviving the next week. Now that introductions are over, let's get
to work people.”

“Ladies and gentlemen you and I are up against a horror weapon of
the Xeno war. This was unfortunately a common trick during the Xeno war, the
Xeno's would create or scavenge a pod, stuff its contents with a nanite
package, or a pathogen bundle, and then drop it where someone would find it.
Which happened here.”

He turned and picked up an ancient mono microscope from the nearby
shelf. It was easily twenty kilograms of pig iron, steel, and primitive glass.
He set it down and picked up other items and put them down in a pile as he
talked.

“Commander,” he said, turning to Sprite.

“Here is a list of known pathogens the Xeno's typically used in
cases like this,” Sprite replied, picking up where he left off as he placed his
right hand onto the pile. His right hand turned silver making the group gasp.
Sprite's image looked down to him over his shoulder. She shook her head
slightly and then continued.

“The pathogens are all weaponized, all rendered incredibly lethal,
but also protean. Most likely they have some sort of carrier bug that will spew
them out at will.”

“They are designed to kill off all organic life on the planet,
starting with intelligent life. It will go down from there, right down to
plants and single celled organisms. The Xeno’s were thorough.”

“Is this like that planet nearby? Um... the one between Proxima
and Avalon,” Doctor Zane asked, holding a hand up.

“No, and please don't interrupt,” Sprite replied. Zane dropped his
hand sheepishly. Then his eyes caught the dissolving materials on the desk and
he gasped, involuntarily stepping back in fear.

Sprite's avatar eyes cut briefly to the admiral and then back to
the room. “What the admiral is demonstrating are gobblers. Nanites programmed
to dissolve anything and everything. In this case he's also using the nanites
to make... ah yes. A communications device as well as an air mask,” Sprite
replied, noting the command lines.

Irons nodded, hand flexing as he finished. When he withdrew it a
small satellite radio transceiver and a full face filtration mask was now there
where the microscope and other selected bits had once been. The woman nearby
fainted.

There was a moment of consternation from the group, then the
woman's nearest neighbors began fanning her and checking her pulse. Someone
opened a window.

Irons sighed, shaking his head. Sprite put a karat over the head
of a fifty year old brunette woman. She looked a little frazzled he noted, but
she was in control of her emotions. He tossed her the mask to her.

She caught the mask and then examined it with interest. It was
light years beyond the simple cloth masks they had. “Thanks, but we'll need a
lot more of these,” she said, setting it down on the desk in front of her.

“Definitely,” Sprite responded. Her image was replaced with a
satellite view of Rubicon.

"This is the town of Rubicon, now a ghost town. Here it is
two days ago,” she narrated, showing white hot spots. “The white and yellow
spots are people and equipment. People and equipment give off heat as you
know.”

“Yes, we know,” Malcolm Innes replied, sounding testy.

“Right. Here is the same town as of now,” Sprite replied. The
image was replaced by one devoid of moving heat signatures. Only a single heat
source was evident, that of an engine running.

“They're all dead?” Malcolm asked, looking at Helen. She bit her
lip.

“All dead. Zooming out, two kilometer radius,” Sprite replied. The
image zoomed out, there were no signs of life. “As you can see, nothing. It's
gone from attacking intelligent life to also wiping out all animal life as
well. Nothing, not even a mosquito is alive there now,” she said. She zoomed
out again, and then again. Finally at twenty kilometers out she found signs of
life. A red line was traced around the outbreak. At one section where the line
crossed a farm they could see a family within. Sprite split the screen, the
second screen zoomed into the farm shot. They watched, normally awed, but now
in horror as the white images, distinctly human walked around the house and
then started coughing. Some doubled over, others collapsed where they were
after a few minutes and laid still. “Life signs terminated,” Sprite said
dispassionately as the bodies cooled.

“Spirit of space!” Zane whispered as a woman whimpered and then
started to cry. He turned to the nurse and another with her and silently
indicated the door. The second nurse put her arm over the shoulder of the
crying woman and escorted her out.

“As you can see this is rapidly gaining momentum. The prevailing
winds are roughly eight kilometers per hour from the north west directing the
infection right now since we can now confirm it is airborne,” Sprite said. The
large shot filled the screen once more, thankfully for those who couldn't take
their eyes off the farm. The AI overlaid a terrain map, and then a weather map
complete with wind direction. Then the map changed with a key code. The
prevailing winds were from a warm front coming from the south west, moving
north east. What they had thought of as a perfect circle of outbreak was
nothing of the sort. It was an oval, a candle flame with its point in the
direction of Hazard. Fortunately the winds were moving at only eight kph, so
they had some time until it reached the outskirts of Hazard one hundred
kilometers away.

“As you can see, the pathogens are spreading like wild fire. This
is rapidly going from a potential class six bio-hazard into a full epidemic,
and in less than a week, a full pandemic. The good news is that this wind is
expected to die off by nightfall. The high over the area is expected to be muggy
with gusting winds.”

“Where are you getting this?” Doctor Zane asked quietly, tapping a
finger onto the table gently.

“Phoenix. The Phoenix AI to be more precise. Please don't
interrupt,” Sprite said. “Save your questions for the end of my presentation,” she
admonished. Zane nodded curtly.

“As I was saying, the high has a great deal of water vapor, expect
thunderstorms in the area. That will keep the infection localized overnight,
but it will continue to spread through the water table and through the passing
winds. Phoenix calculates it will hit the outer edges of Hazard city within
three to four standard days, perhaps sooner.”

“As people react they will naturally follow their basic instinct
to flee. Some of these pathogens have longer incubation times, some have long
periods of survivability outside a host body. Periods lasting into years, and
for some possibly centuries.”

“As the people flee the protean nature of the pathogen will emerge
more fully, but it will hasten the demise of the population.” On the screen the
image changed as people were factored into the equation. Red spots started to
appear in centers of population, and then outward.

“Weaponized smallpox, hemorrhagic fevers, influenza, Yellow fever,
Veraxin hemorrhagic fever,  Prions, Veraxin MS, good old fashioned plague, take
your pick. Do we have any symptoms?” Sprite asked, listing all the known
bio-weapons the Xeno's had used once more and then her image returned to the
screen.

“Coughing,” Malcolm replied, glancing at his boss for
confirmation. Helen nodded.

“Coughing? That's it?” Sprite asked, raising an eyebrow.

“He didn't live long enough to give us more,” Malcolm replied
tartly. “Long enough to get the warning out.”

“He. Species?” Sprite asked, all business.

“Veraxin. Doctor Tormens. Good bug. He was a hell of a hard ass
during my internship...”

“That's fine,” Sprite said. “If he was communicating and
ambulatory for a period of more than fifteen minutes after initial infection
then it is not nanites. Or at least not fast acting nanites. We need more
data.”

“Empirical testing is out. We can't get in and out with a sample.
That means we need to send a drone in. One with enough power and range to
launch from far enough out, but also able to carry a test payload,” the admiral
rumbled.

“Standard destruct?” Sprite asked.

“Into the ground,” Irons replied with a nod. “Start with air
samples at various altitudes. See how far it goes.”

“Understood. Compiling material list and calculating necessary
build time now,” Proteus replied.

“You said this was a weapon, an alien weapon, how did they get it
all? How did they make it? I mean we're alien...” a doctor asked.

“A question for another time,” Helen said.

“Medical texts,” Irons replied. He pushed a chip over to Helen.
“It's all there, all the medical texts. If anyone gained access to it they'd
have the blueprints to not only our DNA, but also our immune systems, and even
the blueprints of the diseases we have encountered.”