A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10)

by Glynn Stewart

  “Magic, maybe?” Bolivar asked. “I’ll admit I know nothing about it.”

  Roslyn shook her head.

  “It’s not that easy, Captain. It’s never that easy. You need to know what you’re doing—I can kill a lot of people at once if I’m pushed, but I barely know enough about the human body to splint a broken bone with magic, let alone actually fix the bone.”

  “A man who knows nothing can hope, at least,” Bolivar said quietly. “I’ll see if we can source that cable.”

  A chirp in Roslyn’s helmet told her the Marines were closer.

  “Sergeant Colburn?” she asked.

  “Yes, sir,” the Marine replied. “I’ve got Lieutenant Evanson on the channel as well; he’s flying the shuttle.”

  “How are you doing for fuel, Lieutenant?” Roslyn asked.

  “Enough to get back to orbit again, so about twelve more hours in the air,” Evanson said. “I’m in contact with the other shuttles as well. Despite the plan…well…we all got close to those sprayers, sir.

  “There’s no way we can trust our hulls not to be contaminated. I don’t want to bring us too close to your area. We’d be bringing the damn weapon with us.”

  “I wish I could tell you going into orbit would kill it, but I have no data,” Roslyn told them, considering how best to use them. “I need you to orbit the city and provide whatever coordination support you can to the Guardia. They’re undermanned and terrified, but the sight of RMMC assault shuttles might help them find nerve, even keeping them high enough to avoid any infection risk.”

  “Understood, sir,” Evanson replied. He paused and audibly swallowed. “What mapping we’re getting from Huntress flags major movement of infected victims. Mobs, basically. Do we…engage?”

  “Negative,” Roslyn said. “For now, at least. Those people are as innocent as the ones we’re trying to protect. I’m hoping to find an answer in the damn lab, and everyone who dies isn’t someone we can help later.”

  “I really, really wish Nix worked on these poor people,” Colburn admitted.

  “Me too,” she agreed. “And that is why the monsters who designed the Orpheus weapon made sure Nix wouldn’t.”

  “Please tell me those fuckers are dead,” the Marine said.

  “They’re dead,” Roslyn confirmed. “Cost too many good people even finding them, but they’re dead.”

  “Good to hear,” the Sergeant told her. “Linking into the Guardia net now, sir. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Roslyn sighed as she dropped the channel.

  “I hope you find something, Sergeant,” she whispered. “Because I’m not even sure what I can do.”

  38

  There was nothing calming or peaceful about a crowd of thousands of children under the age of ten. Their teachers were doing everything in their power to keep the kids moving, but there was only so much they could do—and many of the children were panicking.

  Roslyn stood back from the slowly moving crowds, using the Guardia network and the overhead from Huntress to try to estimate the spread of the infection. So far, it looked like the park was safe, which meant the lab was definitely safe.

  But the more people they got underground, the better.

  “Abiodun, what does Huntress have aboard in terms of filter systems?” she asked the destroyer’s logistics officer. “We should have some stuff for emergency epidemic aid, right?”

  “I think so,” Lieutenant Commander Jamshed Abiodun told her. “I’m not sure we have anything rated for weaponized nanotech. I mean…what kind of monster even builds that?”

  “The kind that worked for Project Prometheus,” Roslyn told him. “You have the map of the facility, right? I can forward it if you don’t.”

  “A partial one, anyway,” Abiodun confirmed. “I’m guessing that’s all we’ve got?”

  “Yeah. I’m thinking about that tunnel, though,” she said. “It’s most of a klick long and large enough for heavy vehicles. If we put a refugee camp in there, it isn’t going to be comfortable, but if we seal the entrance with our filtration systems, that should let us put at least another couple thousand people somewhere safe.”

  For now was unspoken. Roslyn wasn’t even sure how she was going to feed everyone they were stuffing into the Orpheus lab. But every person she got onto the other side of their filters was someone who wasn’t at risk of being turned into a murderous killing machine.

  “I’m checking the manifests now, and we’ve got the setups for two temporary class six biohazard containment facilities,” the other Navy officer told her. “They’re supposed to be set up as prefab buildings, but I think you can use the walls as a blockade and get the filters running.”

  “Even if we can’t, they’re not going to be any use sitting in Huntress’s storage holds,” she said. “Can you get them down here?”

  “They’re designed for air drop. I’ll have to check with the pilots we’ve got left, but I think we can get them into a hundred-meter target zone from thirty klicks up,” he said. “If you can mark out that kind of zone, I can send them down.”

  He paused.

  “We’ve got a few air-drop supply capsules designed for that,” he noted. “I’m guessing a couple dozen thousand ration packs wouldn’t go unused, either?”

  Protectorate emergency ration packs were wonders of modern nutrition technology, providing the protein, nutrients and minimum hydration a human needed for a day in a reasonably tasty, if unappetizingly goopy, package.

  “I can hope this won’t last long enough for us to need more than that,” she agreed. “So far as I can tell, our biohazard suits are safe, but once the nanites reach here, anyone outside won’t be able to go in the safe zone.

  “So, drop whatever you can, Jamshed,” she said. “It might make all the difference.”

  “Already got people loading the shuttles,” he promised. “Get us that drop zone and we’ll get you the decon and filtration gear for the sites immediately. We’ll sequence food and whatever else we can dig out of the holds until we run out of drop pods…or time.”

  “Thank you,” Roslyn said. “It will save lives.”

  “What use is Her Majesty’s Protectorate if we don’t protect people, Chambers?” he asked. “We’ll do what we can.”

  Organizing a clear safe zone for the drop pods to come down was a relief from watching the overall state of Nueva Portugal, but it only occupied a few minutes of Roslyn’s time—and she had to delegate someone else to watch the slow descent of a city of two million souls into madness.

  That someone was Victoriano Bolivar, and even through full coverage body armor, he seemed ill when Roslyn returned to him.

  “We’ve got the biohazard gear and food supplies coming in,” she reassured him. “We should be able to get it all set up before…”

  He shook his head.

  “Bolivar?”

  “The spread is accelerating,” he told her, his voice dead. “I don’t even have Guardia contact in a third of the city anymore. We’ve lost control. What’s left of the Guardia is falling back on us here, but…even that’s a risk.”

  “I know,” she said. “But we don’t have anywhere else to send them.”

  “We don’t have space for the uninfected,” Bolivar reminded her. “And…we can’t tell the difference until they snap. I just watched a precinct station of thirty officers go dark after one person they’d hauled in earlier as a drunk snapped.

  “Everyone in the cell block was infected and started snapping as well…including the officers guarding them. It’s a nightmare, Chambers. What do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Roslyn admitted. “We get as many people to safety as we can and protect them.”

  She brought up the map of the city and grimaced, glad no one could see her face behind the armor. As Bolivar had said, entire sections of the city—everything within ten kilometers, at least, of the aerosol sprayers—were now only showing data coming in from Huntress above.

  There were still potentially uninfec
ted people in those areas, but how were they supposed to find them?

  “Assuming this version works like the previous version, anyone we can scan with bioscanners is going to dissolve the nanites,” she said slowly. “That’s the only protection we’ve got. We’re going to have to start scanning everyone we send down soon.”

  “Now, I suggest,” Bolivar told her. “It’s the only tool we’ve got.”

  Roslyn gestured at the crowd still filtering through the park toward the Orpheus lab.

  “Scanning them all is going to slow this down to the point where we’ll lose more,” she reminded him. “The decon chambers in the lab will kill it, theoretically. Andrews is supposed to be cycling everyone through those, whether they stay in the main lab or not.”

  “And what happens if this one is tougher, less designed to be subtle?” the Guardia officer asked.

  There was a hopelessness to his tone that threatened to drag Roslyn down into despair with him, but she shook her head firmly.

  “The last one survived being blown up,” she pointed out. “This one only had to survive being sprayed into the air and scattered across the city. If anything, it’s probably more vulnerable than the first one.”

  Neither of those really matched up with something that dissolved under the controlled radiation of a standard bioscan, but that was the evidence Roslyn had to work with. Everyone who might know more was dead.

  Well, not everyone.

  “We have to continue on as planned,” she told Bolivar. “Once we’ve got a secondary filtration setup outside the secured nanotech lab, that gives us a chance to triage people and make sure they’re clear of the nanites while separating our definitely clean population from the risk groups.

  “For now, I want you to keep people moving and keep that drop zone clear. Let me know once our likely infectious zone gets within five kilometers of us.”

  “What are you going to do?” Bolivar asked. They’d both thought she was going to take most of that back from him.

  “I’m going to be listening to everyone’s reports…and talking to the Augments we captured alive.”

  39

  Unlike the first time Roslyn had ventured into the Orpheus lab, this time she had full communications with everyone. Drones and relay stations and even physical cables had been laid to make that possible. They couldn’t afford delays in communication, not as expanding mobs of Orpheus’s victims were heading in their direction.

  She wasn’t sure how many people were infected or even how many were dead. The Orpheus nanotech appeared to leave other infected alone, but everyone and everything else was a target.

  There was going to be a lot of heartbreak in Nueva Portugal when this was over—and that was assuming that Roslyn managed to fix things. Her only current hope for that lay with the handful of Augments they’d shot with SmartDarts.

  Only one of them was conscious when she reached the cell they’d been stuffed in. A trio of nervous Guardia officers stood watch, but they recognized her and silently allowed her past.

  The conscious Augment was carefully shuffling across the floor, as if every single motion required specific thought and analysis. With her cybernetics offline, that was probably true.

  She still heard Roslyn approach and looked up, bright green eyes flashing in the dark as she saw her captor. A few commands opened the door to the cell and Roslyn gestured for the woman to join her.

  “Let’s have a chat,” the Navy officer told the prisoner. “I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “I’m not seeing any real reason for me to bother,” the Augment replied. “Runa Hase. Master Sergeant, Republic of Faith and Reason Augment Corps. KCD-One-Five-Nine-Z-D-Five.”

  Roslyn crooked a finger, lifting Hase off her feet and hauling her out of the cell with magic. Unable to resist the bonds of force, the Augment glared at her in silence until they were in the cell next door, which was just as bare.

  Sighing, Roslyn used the same trick to pull two chairs and a table in from the guard station outside—to the surprise of the Guardia officers, from the sounds of it.

  “Make sure the other cell is sealed,” she told them loudly. “Just because people look like they’re asleep doesn’t mean they are.”

  She’d closed it behind her, but a double check never hurt.

  With that settled, Roslyn turned her gaze on her prisoner, standing stiffly next to the seat.

  “You may as well sit down, Ms. Hase,” she told the Augment.

  “Runa Hase, Master Sergeant, Republic—”

  “The Republic was officially dissolved by act of the Republic Parliament nineteen months ago, as required by the Hyacinth Treaty,” Roslyn reminded Hase. “You are not a soldier of any of the so-called Free Worlds—who would disown you in an instant to avoid conflict with the Protectorate.”

  Four of the former Republic worlds had voted against rejoining the Protectorate. Each had their own reasons, and they hadn’t managed to create any kind of joint structure. Each of the Free Worlds stood alone—and their governments were very aware of the power imbalance between one world and the Protectorate’s hundred-plus.

  “Since the Republic no longer exists and you do not serve any government that would claim you, you are not a prisoner of war,” Roslyn laid out calmly. “You are a terrorist, involved in the manufacture and deployment of a nanotech bioweapon.

  “Even the Republic did not allow or condone the development of biological or nanotechnological weaponry, Ms. Hase,” she reminded the Augment. “By the laws of the Republic, let alone the Protectorate, you are guilty of crimes against humanity. The evidence of this facility is more than sufficient to condemn everyone working in it.”

  “Runa Hase, Master Sergeant, KCD-One-Five-Nine-Z-D-Five,” Hase reeled off, her eyes focused on the ceiling. She didn’t seem to have any illusions about her ability to threaten Roslyn without her cybernetics, but she remained standing and unhelpful.

  “Right. Take a fucking seat, Ms. Hase,” Roslyn snapped.

  She locked gazes with the green-eyed brunette across the room. Hase was pale, almost disturbingly pallid—presumably from living underground in the lab for extended periods.

  After maybe fifteen seconds, Hase finally took a seat in the chair.

  “The only reason we are having this conversation is because your boss apparently had a fuck-everybody plan that involved deploying an infectious version of the Orpheus weapon,” Roslyn told the woman. “Right now, you’re on the right side of the lab’s biofilters, but that means you are using up space I can use for at least a dozen actually innocent people.

  “It would be entirely reasonable, I think, to transfer you to holding cells on the surface.”

  “That would be a war crime,” Hase hissed.

  “Would it?” Roslyn asked. “Or would I be acting to protect the people I am actually supposed to defend? If I can preserve several dozen lives by risking a handful, is that a crime? You’d still be held under all normal protocols.”

  “And when the nanites take us, you’re a murderer,” the Augment told her.

  “Or would I have murdered the dozens of people I can save if I turn those cells into dorms?” Roslyn said. “You know what I’m looking at up there, Ms. Hase. You know damn well I’m not staying down here myself. Not when there are kids I can stick in this bunker instead.

  “So, when my hazmat armor runs out of air, I’ll die,” she said grimly. “On the surface, honoring my oath to protect people. Of course, with the Orpheus weapon, it’ll take me a while and I might hurt other people before I finally fall down.

  “Given that fate, Ms. Hase, I don’t expect to have to face a court-martial for anything I do here.” Roslyn conjured visible fire around her fists for a moment, reminding the Augment of what she was.

  “There are lines I still don’t think I’ll cross, but you knowingly worked for the project that made this shit. I might bend a few more with you.” She shrugged. “We both know torturing you for information is pointless, but if I summarily exe
cute you and interview the next prisoner next to your corpse, I think that might make a point?”

  Roslyn probably wouldn’t do that. It was a violation of every code she’d sworn to uphold, everything she believed in. But she was tempted enough that she suspected she could make Hase believe it was a risk.

  “I’m just a guard,” Hase finally said quietly. “I don’t know anything about the damn weapon.”

  “You can give us access codes for the base network,” Roslyn said. “That gives us a starting point. I’m guessing you had training on countermeasures for the damn weapon, too?”

  “Okay.” Hase exhaled. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “We’ve quarantined the peninsula with a secondary quarantine around the planet,” Roslyn admitted. “Best guess is around six or seven hundred thousand civilians infected or dead. We can’t evacuate the rest of the city—we don’t have the biohazard-secured lift capacity anywhere on the planet.

  “So, at a minimum, we’re looking at writing off the two million people in Nueva Portugal,” she said coldly. “Less whoever I can shove in this bunker and feed until everyone on the surface is dead. It’s about as bad as it could possibly be, Ms. Hase.”

  Hase nodded. Unless Roslyn was crazy, there were actual tears in the woman’s eyes.

  “Most of my codes are in my implants,” she warned Roslyn. “I’ll give you my backup login, but I’m not sure how much help that will be. As for emergency procedures… The decon rooms.”

  “The decon rooms?” Roslyn asked.

  “That was all we were told,” the Augment admitted. “If we had any reason to believe we’d been exposed, we were to immediately proceed to the nearest decontamination chamber and let it run.

  “My understanding was that there was a purge function that would kill any unprotected nanites in the facility, but I don’t know what it was,” Hase continued. “I do know that the decontamination chambers have something that is specifically tailored to kill the nanites.