by Kal Spriggs
“You're leaving, then?” Fenris asked.
“Bob's organization will probably have uses for me,” she acknowledged. “And wherever he goes, I would like to be there.”
“I understand,” Fenris said. And really, he did. Though he would miss Aldera Kynes and her technical expertise. “Tell me about my bodies.”
She walked over and pulled a tarp away from the first of them. It was built off the same frame as his old interior security robots. A big, wolf-like robot. “Fully armored combat chassis. I've added to the firepower, twin pulse lasers, they should penetrate most body armor. More importantly, it has a terrabyte processor, so even if you experience jamming or you go outside of range for your transmitters and receivers, it should be capable of semi-autonomous actions. Simplistic, but still able to identify friend and foe and engage with a variety of tactics.”
“Excellent,” Fenris answered, “May I?”
“Of course,” She toggled something on her datapad and Fenris felt the robot come to life-- and he dove into it, amazed at the intuitive way that the robot's systems merged with his own.
He walked the robot around, taking almost delicate steps in the lab, worried that he might damage something with the big robot's bulk. Yet it moved with ease and surprising agility for its size and weight. “Most impressive.”
To his shock, his voice emerged from the robot, a deep rumble that not even his intercoms could match. Even more to his surprise, he could feel his voice in the robot's deep chest, a rumbling growl that felt more alive than anything else.
“I'm glad you like it,” Aldera told him with a smile.
She walked over and whipped the tarp off several more, these were lighter chassis, still wolf-like, but lighter and leaner than the main one. “Auxiliaries for sweeping through the ship. Still well armored and capable of semi-autonomous behavior, but more limited in their options. They're all equipped for recon and their transmitters can operate at limited distances, just like your main body. Maximum effective control range is about a thousand kilometers. So you can take a walk around a planet surface, but you're going to need a lot of bandwidth to do that.”
“I think I can manage,” if worse came to worse, he'd ask Mel about upgrades. He settled the robot to its haunches, appreciating the smooth motions. “What else?”
“That's all I had time to finish,” she admitted. “To be honest, I had a few more ideas, including, well, that,” she gestured at a chair with a complicated array of sensors around the headrest. “I was thinking a human-AI interface, but the biological stuff is a little outside my experience. I'll leave you my sketches and notes, you may be able to find someone who can make it all work, but I'm not certain of the benefits, even then, over an implant.”
“I understand,” Fenris answered. He hesitated, then. “I had a request of you. Something that I would hope that you could keep between you and I.”
Aldera frowned, “Of course.”
“You might have noticed that I locked down the other space next to your lab,” Fenris began. He felt a flutter of uncertainty. He had worked through simulations of this conversation a hundred different ways and he still didn't know how the scientist would react. He toggled open the hatch, “It might be easier to show you.”
She stepped into the next room. Fenris had already had most of the equipment he needed. Spare medical supplies and equipment they'd had aboard, plus some things that Marcus had in his personal quarters for adjusting his implants.
Marcus Keller's body lay in a cocoon of medical equipment at the center of the small room.
Aldera didn't say anything at first, she walked over to one of the monitors. “Interesting,” she noted. “You managed to resuscitate his body, I see.”
“His implants were part of that,” Fenris answered, “I don't think anyone realized how heavily modified he was.”
“He was Guard Intelligence, many of their agents are extensively 'enhanced,' yes,” Aldera noted, her voice derisive. “But I fail to see the point. Melanie Armstrong's bullet was well-placed, there's not much left of his brain and zero brain activity on the monitors. As soon as you remove him from this equipment, he'd die.”
“Agreed,” Fenris acknowledged. “For that matter, I think we're all better off without him.” He hadn't trusted the former agent's judgement and he very much approved of Mel's action. “This isn't about him... this is about his body.” He found himself surprisingly nervous as he went on. “It's heavily modified with cybernetics and there's some chemical dependencies that would need to be addressed... but it's a perfectly good body.” He couldn't help but sound slightly defensive as he said that.
Aldera looked up in surprise. Then, to his surprise and relief, she gave a long laugh, “You know, that's true, it is a perfectly good body. It would be a shame for it to go to waste.” She shook her head, “What you're asking, it's significantly more difficult than what I did out there.” She waved a hand at the robots. “For that matter, I don't know if there are processors small enough and capable enough, much less transmitters and the rest. What you want... it's going to be difficult, if not impossible. I certainly don't have time to do it before, well, before Bob and I leave.”
“I understand,” Fenris answered. “But you can point me in the right direction, give me a starting point?”
“Of course,” Aldera smiled, “and for some reason, the thought of you making Jean Paul's body dance around like a puppet amuses me greatly.”
She clapped her hands together and then she and Fenris started on this fresh project.
***
On the last day before their arrival at Harmony, Admiral Rao asked to meet them on the bridge. He typed in a set of coordinates on the display as Mel's crew assembled. “This,” he said, “is a station in the outer system. It's not on any charts, it's coated in an ammonia ice shell and in an angled orbit so most of the time it is well outside the elliptic plane, for at least the next three hundred years.”
Mel opened her mouth to ask why this mattered, but he went on, “That lab is where I helped to develop Jormungandr's Venom. It's a nanite weapon capable of killing all life on a planet. It works slowly, penetrating the environment, multiplying in the biosphere, most often in the clouds, using the water cycle of a planet to circulate and spread.”
He looked around at them all. “It communicates using ultra low frequency radio waves, stuff outside the bands that we use, forming a network that increases in processing power as the nanites multiply. As they do so, they utilize recon nanites to infiltrate plant, animal, and bacterial life. They're in the clouds, in the seas, everywhere. They draw power from solar energy, from latent heat, and they can transmit power via the ultra-low frequency radio waves, with the ones in the upper atmosphere sending power to others all around a planet. Not much, granted, but enough to keep them functioning.”
He sighed, “Once the multiplication processes and recon processes are complete, they begin full infection. At this point, there are tens of billions of these things per square mile. They seem inert to most sensors, nothing more than dust motes. But people and animals will breathe them in, plants will absorb them through their roots or leaves. They penetrate cell walls and then...” He snapped his finger. “Death. Death on a scale that the human mind can't comprehend. They can destroy a cell in hundreds of ways. They do that throughout a body, inert nanites coming to life, killing one cell and moving to the next, and the next. In a matter of a couple hours, their targets are dead... everywhere.”
“Jormungandr's Venom,” Rao said softly, “from the Norse dragon that brought Ragnarok: It poisoned the sky and the world died.”
“Jesus,” Mel said softly.
“I need you to take me to this station,” Rao went on. “Then I'll meet with Colonel Frost. I need you to follow my instructions exactly. We can't afford to let this get loose anywhere. These nanites, by every simulation, will persist for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. They'll spread from one planet to the next and before anyone knows why or what happened, e
ntire planets will die, maybe all of Guard Space.”
“Are you insane?” Rawn demanded. “You can't take this to Colonel Frost. He won't hestitate to use it!”
“I will make my case to him,” Rao gave a cold smile, “Believe me, I can be most convincing. But I need you to warn my planet, warn your fellow mercenaries. I can't be certain that Frost will see reason. If he does not, then you will need to prevent him from destroying my planet.”
Mel thought about her orders. She was still supposed to deliver Admiral Rao to Commodore Creed before the election. They were pushing it as it was... and somehow she doubted that even if Colonel Frost accepted Rao's arguments that he would let the officer go free.
But she thought about what was at stake. An entire planet on one hand and on the other... possibly the survival of humanity. Mel gave him a nod, “We'll do it. We won't let him harm your world.”
She just hoped for the sake of her own conscience, that she was right.
***
Chapter 21
Time: 1200 3 March 292 G.D.
Location: Liberation Station, Harmony System, Harmony Protectorate
Colonel Frost checked the clock, watching seconds tick away. The mercenary ship should have arrived almost an hour ago, yet it hadn’t appeared anywhere in the inner system. There’d been an arrival in the outer system, but far too distant for his people to identify it with their sensors.
He had ordered the freighters to power up their drives on arrival. The Canopus had arrived just at the end of some kind of battle between Admiral Mizra and the mercenaries defending the planet. Unfortunately, it looked as if the mercenaries had won, so Colonel Frost still had to carry through with his threat, assuming that Admiral Rao didn’t deliver.
It also looked as if the election had gone even more in Rao’s favor than expected. Initial votes weren’t complete, but the numbers of citizens voting for “President” Rao were disheartening. Just the fact that he surrendered to the Guard forces that arrived after his coup tell me he hasn’t the stomach to stand up to them.
Even as he considered that, though, he couldn’t help but feel like a hypocrite. Admiral Rao had thrown the corrupt leadership out of the system, he’d thumbed his nose at the Guard. He’d done all of that without resorting to terror attacks. The vast majority of his “victims” had been the oligarchs he’d overthrown… and he’d won over massive public support as a result.
It doesn’t matter, Colonel Frost reminded himself. Harmony, indeed, the entire Harmony Protectorate, was a small cluster of systems. Four major inhabited worlds, fifteen stars. It was insignificant against the scale of the Harlequin Sector, much less the rest of Guard Space. This was a war where thousands of systems were on the line… and Colonel Michael Frost couldn’t worry about the fate of four of them, much less a single world.
That was why he’d given orders to his freighter crews. If the mercenaries looked to be forming up to screen the planet, they were to launch their attacks immediately. The two-man crews for all of those freighters had been carefully selected. They were men and women dedicated to the cause, soldiers who had lost everything to the Guard. He knew that every one of them would follow those orders… and it would only take one ship getting through to destroy the planet.
To kill three billion innocent people… Colonel Frost couldn’t stop that thought, but he could bury it, just as he could bury his self-loathing and hate. He had a mission, he would not fail.
“Sir,” one of his technicians hurried over. “We’re recieiving a transmission, from the outer system. It’s Admiral Rao. The battlecruiser is coming in, they’ve offered to remain outside of weapons range and send Rao over in a shuttle.”
Colonel Frost’s eyes narrowed. “They’ll have warp missiles, can we defend against those effectively?”
His tech shook his head, “No, sir. This station’s defenses are minimal, we might be able to knock down one, but…”
“Understood, relay to the freighters to hold position, but if they fire on us, launch the attack,” Colonel Frost said. “Then tell the mercenary ship it can approach and to send Rao over in a shuttle. Alone.” He doubted that Rao would authorize that kind of attack, though. For that matter, the mercenaries must be pretty desperate to save their payday. Any kind world-ending catastrophe like that would come back on them. The companies involved would probably face official censure, fines, possibly even jail time for their commanders for negligence. That’s what the boot-lickers deserve, anyway.
He watched as the mercenary ship approached. Just outside of effective weapons, other than its onboard warp missiles, it powered down its drive field. A moment after that, a shuttle detached and then came in to dock. “I want a full security team on him. Verify it’s him, search him for any weapons or gear, do you understand?”
His security team acknowledged and he pulled up a security monitor at his terminal, watching.
Admiral Rao wore a full body suit as he stepped off the shuttle. He removed his helmet as ordered and held up what looked like a sample case, “I have your weapon, Colonel.”
“Search him, be careful with that case, though,” Colonel Frost licked his lips. He didn’t trust the other man. He fought the urge to order his men to kill him, now that he had what he wanted. I may need his knowledge and I wouldn’t put it past him to have made the sample inert without some kind of activation code.
His men searched him thoroughly. They took their time, in part because they knew Frost was watching, in part because at this point, they were all that was left of Guard Free Now in the entire sector. His senior team leader stepped back and signaled that they’d found no weapons or communications gear. The only thing Rao had brought with him was the hazard suit and the case. “Bring him up.”
“Order your ships to return to the station,” Rao said.
“You’re not in the position to make demands,” Colonel Frost snapped.
“I will not cooperate until I know my planet is safe. Do as I ask and I will answer all of your questions, follow all of your commands. Otherwise, your people will have to shoot me,” Rao crossed his arms, glaring up at the security monitor. Damn, but I actually respect him. It was a bit of a surprise for Colonel Frost. Everyone he’d dealt with, even the most dedicated of his people, were cynical and jaded. His time in the Star Guard had left him bitter and angry. This man, though, stood by his principles, and he did it in a simple, immovable fashion that Colonel Frost envied.
“Fine,” he gave the order, over the radio, keeping the intercom live so that Rao could hear his words and the responses of his ship’s officers. One by one, they docked with his station, Colonel Frost watching the mercenary ship warily the whole time. But the mercenaries drive field remained offline. Their weapons remained powered down. “They’re docked,” he announced finally. He probably could have lied, but he wouldn’t put it past the mercenaries to have some method to signal Rao if he hadn’t been truthful. Besides, it felt like Rao was dealing fairly with him, so Frost felt an almost perverse impulse to do the same.
Colonel Frost waited impatiently. The base wasn’t very large, but it still seemed to take hours or even days. Finally, though, Rao stepped carefully through the hatch, walking slowly, almost hesitantly, forward to stand a short distance away.
“What took you so long?” Frost couldn’t help but jab at him, to see if he really was so confident. “I was almost to the point that I gave the order to trigger Tsunami.”
“I had to retrieve the samples from a lab in the outer system,” Rao answered, holding up the case. Inside it, behind two layers of armored glass, Frost could see four vials.
“Check it,” he ordered his tech. The man hurried over and took the case, gingerly, from Rao, before setting it in a sensor box. He ran the tests twice, before he looked up and gave Colonel Frost a nod. “The samples contain active nanites of some kind. Extremely advanced. I can’t tell you what they do, but each sample has several million of them. If they’re self-replicating, they’ll be enough to infect a world b
eyond any containment protocols.”
Colonel Frost felt a smile draw his lips back, “Excellent, excellent.” His gaze went to Rao, “I almost believed you wouldn’t hand over a weapon like this. I’m almost disappointed.”
“You can’t use it,” Rao’s expression was downcast. “There’s no containing Jormungandr’s Venom. Once it gets out, it’s like the mythological Pandora’s box. It will kill everything, Frost. Everything.”
“They’re nanites, surely there’s a kill command?” Colonel Frost shrugged. “Or would you have me believe that your people developed a superweapon that could destroy themselves?”
“There is a kill command,” Rao looked down. “What they found, however, is that it only works once for each node of nanites. Any nanites that don’t get the kill code on the first dose encounter the damaged nanites, eat them, and learn to ignore that kill code in the future.”
“Hmmm,” Colonel Frost considered that. “So, you either have to hit an entire planet with the kill code, all at once or try to clear sections of the planet.”
“Either way,” Rao looked up, “if you miss even one, the things will come back. And when they’re in terminal mode, they’re inside the organisms they’re killing, you won’t get ultra-low frequency transmissions through deep tissue without a very high burst.”
Colonel Frost sat back in his seat, considering that. “So, it’s probably safer just to write off whatever planet I hit with one of these.” He could live with that. It wasn’t much different than hitting a planet with a big bomb or a warp-drive ship, really. Other than the lingering threat of spreading to other worlds. He banished that thought, though. A weapon like this would only need to be used once.
“The kill codes?” Frost asked.
