The Winter War (3 page)

In a way it was kind of
refreshing after spending a few years in a society that considered
sex to be a recreation to be enjoyed at every opportunity. The
Citizens thought of intercourse as a chore, something assigned as a
task when there was a need to replace lost population. At the very
best they viewed it as a last-gasp alternative to their
entertainment of choice; they were pretty much all addicted to what
they called cyber-drugs. Aneka had seen them pushing small,
coloured plugs into the data slots on their necks, but knew that
these pastel-coloured ones were the equivalent of taking a mild
sedative compared to the bold-coloured ones which were roughly the
same as mainlining heroine.

Right now, through an interface
between Aneka’s internal computers and Ella’s implants, she could
tell that Ella’s body was coursing with endorphins. That was
providing a palliative to the longing she had for the direct nerve
stimulation to which she was addicted. She was trying to break that
addiction, but the Citizens watching her were hooked with no desire
to get off their drug of choice.

Ella pushed upward on the bar
she was holding and Aneka saw her brow furrowing, the look of
intense concentration, and the slight tremble in her arms. ‘That’s
enough, love.’

‘One… more,’ Ella grunted, and
started to lower the weights again. Her arms gave out halfway down
and the bar landed in Aneka’s palms, stopping instantly.

‘No, I think that’s enough.’ The
bar went up and was dropped onto the rests as though it weighed
nothing. Aneka noticed the Enforcers looking slightly impressed,
though she was not sure whether that was as a result of her display
of strength or at how well Ella had done.

Ella, however, pouted. ‘I
could’ve managed another.’

‘Before or after the bar crushed
your larynx?’

‘After, obviously.’ Ella sat up,
grabbing a towel to wipe the sweat from her face before it got into
her eyes.

‘There is a security alert at
the surface entrance,’ Al said before Aneka could respond. ‘I
believe you should see this.’ A window appeared in her vision field
showing security camera images. A slightly flat-chested,
black-haired girl was in the surface lobby talking animatedly to
two Enforcers. She looked scared out of her mind, and
desperate.

‘Abigail? Al, put me through to
the current security lead up there.’ She waited for an indicator to
appear confirming the connection. ‘Lieutenant, this is Aneka
Jansen…’

‘Uh… Miss Jansen, yes, of
course, I wasn’t expecting you to… What can I do for you?’

Aneka cringed at the man’s tone;
he sounded as scared as Abigail looked. ‘The girl your men are
talking to, Abigail Linden of Matlock, yes?’

‘Yes, ma’am. She’s babbling
about plague…’

‘There is no way her father
would let her out of town without a very serious reason,
Lieutenant. Have her transferred to the nearest medical centre. I
want her and anyone she’s with checked for any form of disease, and
ask Councillor Marsden to meet me there.’

‘Yes, ma’am!’ In the video view
she had of the lobby Aneka could see Enforcers suddenly shifting
from complacent disregard to action. The place was so hierarchical
and downright honest that they would take orders from anyone who
seemed like they had authority, never mind someone who they seemed
to think was their queen.

‘Come on, Ella,’ Aneka said
aloud. ‘We seem to have a problem.’

~~~

Marsden was waiting at the door of the
small first-aid facility on the surface when Aneka and Ella
arrived. The building had probably been some sort of military
administration facility when it had been part of Aldershot Army
Base, but now most of the interior had been stripped out to make
way for a large but defensible lobby. There was a bank of lifts
leading down to the city at the back of that, and the only other
rooms were a security room used by the Enforcers and a moderately
small, but very functional, medical bay.

‘The techs have checked both of
them out,’ Marsden said as the couple approached. ‘Despite her
claims, neither of them is infected with anything. On the other
hand they both seem worried and the girl is quite insistent that
she be allowed to plead her case with Manu Dei. Of course, that’s
not possible…’

‘I’ll talk to her,’ Aneka
replied, stepping around the Councillor.

‘Good,’ Marsden said. ‘To be
honest, we’re having trouble deciphering her accent.’

Abigail’s eyes bulged as she saw
Aneka walking toward her. Whether that was surprise at seeing a
woman she thought was Ella’s servant, or the sight of said woman in
a semi-transparent, Ultraskin leotard was unclear. Whatever, her
expression of worry tinged with fear and mild panic gave way to
what looked like hope. ‘Aneka! I didn’t think you’d be here, but
please, you’ve got to help us!’ Her eyes flicked to Aneka’s right
and widened again as she saw Ella dressed in her exercise gear.

‘We’ll do everything we can,
Abigail,’ Aneka said. ‘What’s going on?’

The girl swallowed, trying to
compose herself, and then began to explain. ‘It started a few days
ago. A few people got sick and we figured that it was just some
sort of flu, but then the buboes started appearing. Doctor Daventry
said he’d never seen it progress so fast, and the drugs didn’t
work, and then they started coughing…’

‘Wait, all of them?’ The speaker
was a tall man in an outfit with red stripes on his arms: an
insignia that denoted medical and emergency staff.

Abigail nodded. ‘Yes, sir. All
of them. Old Missus Cooper died soon after that and Dad sent me to
get help. He told me I should beg at Manu Dei’s feet if I had
to…’

‘That’s not going to be
possible,’ Aneka said, ‘or necessary.’ She looked at the medic.
‘Isn’t that kind of a quick progression to the pneumonic form?’

He nodded emphatically, looking
perplexed. ‘Sounds like it’s antibiotic resistant
and
the
bubonic form is going directly to pneumonic rather than
septicaemic. That’s
extremely
unusual and potentially very
dangerous.’

‘All right, so what do you do
about it?’

He looked at her and she could
tell that he knew she was not going to like what he was about to
say. ‘Well… normally we’d quarantine the town and sterilise after
the disease has run…’

Aneka nodded. ‘Normally, but
considering that things are now different…?’

He swallowed. ‘We, uh, have some
old biological containment vehicles which we could get up there in…
maybe a day. They have equipment for creating anti-bacterial and
anti-viral agents, and I
think
we could get a portable
nanoviral unit on one in short order. If we can identify the genome
we can program a tailored nanophage…’

‘Very good,’ Aneka told him,
smiling. She turned to Marsden. ‘I’ll go up there ahead of the
transport in the shuttle. I think you should come too, and we’ll
need your best infectious disease specialist, hazmat gear, anything
else they think might be useful. The shuttle has genetic analysis
equipment which Ella can operate. We will take a squadron of
Enforcers up with us. We don’t want people leaving or straying in
until it’s cleared. Uh… Anything else?’

The Councillor shook her head.
‘I believe that should be everything, ma’am. I’ll start making the
arrangements.’

Aneka nodded and turned back to
Abigail. ‘You’ll fly up with us…’

‘Fly?!’ It came out as a
squeak.

‘Yes, fly. Can your friend there
go with the medical team, make sure they get there?’

Bridger had not met Aneka before
and was not as surprised as Abigail was at the apparent change in
authority. ‘I can do that, ma’am. I’ll lead them up in my
truck.’

‘Good man. All right, let’s get
moving. Abigail, you come with us. We’ll have you home and this
sorted out in no time.’

Shuttle, Flying North.

Abigail was gripping the arm rests of
the co-pilot’s seat as though she might float off at any moment, or
they might come crashing down out of the sky. This was despite the
fact that the ship’s artificial gravity made it feel more or less
as though they were quite stationary.

‘It’s perfectly safe, you know?’
Aneka said. ‘I’m quite a good pilot and the weather’s good. This
thing could get us into space without any worries.’

‘Space!’

‘We’re not going that high.
We’ll be back in Matlock in… twelve minutes.’

‘Good.’ The Reeve’s daughter
relaxed a little, probably by an effort of will. ‘Uh… How is it
that the Citizens seem to be following your orders?’

‘Ah, that.’ Aneka frowned,
deciding on how to explain it, and decided on honesty; Abigail
deserved it. ‘We lied to you when we came into town. About where we
came from that is. We’re not from the city; we’re from another
planet.’

Abigail forced a giggle. ‘Don’t
believe you. You’re not green.’

‘Huh. We come from a long way
away. A world called New Earth orbiting around another sun, and we
came to see where Humanity came from. And then things went a bit
wrong. Manu Dei is dead, but she was… Um, she was sort of a
relative of mine and now she’s gone the Citizens keep looking to me
to tell them what to do. I don’t
want
them to, but sometimes
it’s useful. We’re trying to get them organised to be a bit more…
community minded.’

‘You mean like helping us now
instead of letting us die and studying the plague afterward.’

‘Like that, yes.’

There was silence for a second
and Aneka wondered whether Abigail felt hurt by the deception. But
then… ‘Well, that explains why Ella was so nice. And I was
half-expecting the Enforcers to just shoot me when we turned up
like that, so I guess they are better now than they were.’

As if on cue, Ella walked up
from the back and stopped, leaning against Aneka’s flight chair.
She grinned at Abigail. ‘If it’s any consolation, our high-tech
passengers are sitting there looking ashen as well. It’s freaky
that no one here has ever flown before.’

‘The view is kind of beautiful,’
Abigail offered, ‘but I don’t know how you can be so calm.’

‘Put her on a normal aircraft
and she isn’t,’ Aneka replied.

‘This has anti-gravity,’ Ella
said. ‘It’s perfectly safe. Normal aircraft are just held up by air
pressure!’

Aneka laughed. ‘You know, most
people would think being held up on magic, physics-breaking forces
would be the less safe option.’

‘Huh. How long until we
land?’

‘Six minutes.’

‘Fridgy. I’ll go get the
Citizens into hazmat gear. Abigail, you should come put a suit on.
We don’t want to risk you getting infected if we can avoid it.’

Abigail struggled to her feet,
clinging to the back of the chair. ‘What about you?’

‘No need to worry about us,’
Aneka said. ‘We’re aliens, remember?’

‘Aliens don’t get sick?’

‘These aliens don’t,’ Ella
replied.

Aneka spotted the road into
Matlock a few minutes later and then the gorge the town sat in. It
was vaguely Y-shaped, sitting at the junction of three roads at the
bend in a river, and there was a large, flat area in the middle of
it which they had referred to as the town’s square when they were
there before. As Aneka dropped toward it, she cut the main engines
and coasted in on thrusters, setting the shuttle down with barely a
sound. Still, by the time they were exiting through one of the
airlocks a small crowd had formed on the edge of the square and
Linden was limping toward them on his cane.

He went straight for Ella,
apparently a little confused by her mode of dress, but recognising
her and assuming she was in charge. ‘Citizen! You should get back
in your, uh, flying machine. It’s not safe. We…’

‘I’m not a Citizen, Reeve
Linden,’ Ella said, ‘but these two are, and they’re here to help.
And we brought Abigail back, if you can recognise her through the
suit.’

‘Not a…’

‘Your daughter can explain
later,’ Aneka said. ‘Right now we need to get working on a cure for
this plague of yours.’ She looked around at one of the suited
figures. ‘Doctor Kaffrey?’

‘Yes, uh, of course,’ the man
said, his voice distorted by the speaker on his suit. ‘I’ll need
blood samples from the infected, and if I could speak to your
town’s doctor?’

Linden’s face clouded.
‘Unfortunately, you can do that while collecting the samples.
Joshua fell sick last night.’

Marsden spoke up, apparently
starting to take her new job seriously. ‘In that case we have no
time to lose. Kaffrey, I’m sure Miss Narrows will help you with the
blood work. Reeve Linden, I’m Councillor Holly Marsden. I’ve been
put in charge of making the cities more open with the surface and
now seems like a good time to begin. I think we should discuss what
we’re going to do here.’

Linden’s eyes widened;
Councillors did not come out to surface towns. ‘Of course,
Councillor. Please come with me.’ He turned and started off in the
direction of his home.

‘Ella, will you be okay with
Kaffrey?’ Aneka asked.

‘Sure, if we can borrow Abigail
to get us to the doctor’s place.’

‘I’ll take you,’ Abigail
replied.

‘Right,’ Aneka said. ‘I’m going
to make sure things go smoothly between those two.’ And with that
she hurried off after Marsden and Linden. She had the feeling that
they were both going to be a little wary of the new openness which
had suddenly been thrust upon them.

Matlock.

Abigail sat on one of the shuttle’s
laboratory chairs keeping out of the way while she watched Ella
work. There were a dozen samples to be put into small tubes and
then run through the genetic sequencing and analysis machine set
against one of the walls. It was made somewhat more difficult by
the need to work in a glove box, but Ella worked quickly and
silently; she had seen what the disease was doing to its victims
and she wanted it dealt with.