A Darker Magic (Starship's Mage Book 10)

by Glynn Stewart

“Otherwise…I know they need silver, carbon and iron to self-replicate. Most of that they can find in humans, but we weren’t permitted any silver in the facility. Jewelry, art, electronics, whatever. It all was checked for silver before it entered the main lab.”

  She looked down at the table.

  “I don’t know what else to give you,” she admitted. “I was a loyal soldier of the Republic. But this… You do know there’s a suicide charge in our implants, right? It’s not supposed to be externally accessible…but ad Aaron could.”

  “I’d keep that in mind when you go in front of a judge,” Roslyn told Hase. “I will make sure the judge knows you cooperated as best as you could.”

  She snorted bitterly.

  “The value of that, of course, depends on me being alive to tell them.”

  Andrews was waiting for her when she left the cell, the Marine Corporal she’d left to search for Killough now drafted to help keep people organized.

  “Did you find him?” was her first question anyway. She knew the answer—someone would have told her if they’d found Killough.

  “No,” they confirmed. “We didn’t find Killough. We didn’t find the Mage. We did successfully sweep up what we think are all the remaining Augments, but there’s no evidence anyone else was here.

  “It’s like Killough just vanished after the fight with the security Mage. Except for…”

  “Except for?” Roslyn asked, after the Marine trailed off.

  “We did find Lafrenz’s lab partner, another Mage,” Andrews said. “Shot in the back of the head, three times. He never even realized he wasn’t alone, I don’t think. But…other than the bullets, no real sign of a shooter.”

  “That makes no sense, Corporal,” Roslyn pointed out.

  “Someone knew how to hide their tracks, even in a place like this. I don’t know what they did, but they were a ghost.” They shook their head. “Killough seemed good at his job, but this was magic. Literally. I think we had a Mage ghost in here somewhere, and I’m not entirely sure they were on our side. The doctor’s console had been accessed.”

  “Hopefully, they were just as blocked as we have been,” Roslyn said grimly. “I’ll admit that I want to see most of this place’s databases burned. I’ve passed access codes to Knight that will hopefully help us get in, but…”

  “This place is a nightmare. It looks like they didn’t have any prisoners at the moment, but at least one Augment was shooting scientists when we found him,” Andrews admitted. “We’ve found twenty-two presumably non-Mage scientists in the complex. All are dead.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah. Cleanup protocols. We interrupted enough that I think we still have databases, but…they really set this up to make sure no one could deal with what they unleashed in their GOTH plan.”

  “What I know, right now, is that they told the security detail that the decon chambers were guaranteed to remove the weapon,” Roslyn said. “I want you to find whatever techs or engineers we have in the evacuees, pick a decon chamber and tear it apart.

  “We’ll cycle everybody through them before they go deeper, but we’re also hoping our class six protocols hold up for the outer entrance. If there’s something those chambers are doing that our class six protocols aren’t doing, we need to know.”

  “Understood. Where will you be?” Andrews asked.

  “On the surface. I’m the only Mage we have, which means I’m our first line of defense,” Roslyn told him. “Keep Knight working on the databases. Find out what you can about anything this base has that we wouldn’t expect—supposedly, there was an emergency purge that could kill all of the nanites in the facility.

  “We’ve got a lot going on, but if we can find that, we might just have a chance.”

  Andrews exhaled a long sigh and nodded firmly.

  “I’ll get it done, sir, but I could use more Marines,” they admitted.

  “We can’t risk it,” Roslyn said. “Any Marines I bring in have definitely been exposed. Their armor and shuttles are keeping them safe, but we don’t know how well the weapon will survive on the exterior of a suborbital craft.

  “Or even in vacuum, for that matter. Despite its effects and patterns, it’s not actually a biological weapon. Vacuum probably won’t hurt it at all.”

  She shook her head.

  “There’s an answer in this place and several ways to find it, Corporal,” she told Andrews. “I will do everything I can to make sure we live long enough to help.”

  “What happens if all of this fails, sir?” the Marine asked.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “At that point, I’ll probably be dead.”

  The problem, however, was that Roslyn Chambers was a Royal Martian Navy tactical officer. She knew what the answer to a major untreatable infection that had effectively wiped out a major population center was.

  When all other options ran out, Song of the Huntress would use thermonuclear weapons to sanitize Nueva Portugal from orbit.

  40

  It was a strange feeling, walking up the Orpheus complex access tunnel while hundreds of people streamed the other way. They’d started with children from the school, but now it was everyone they could find.

  They had to desperately hope that no one was making it into the underground structure who was infected. Roslyn had always hoped that the decontamination chambers in the complex would be able to handle the Orpheus weapon—they’d have been of little use to the complex if they hadn’t—but confirmation was valuable.

  The fear was the other end of the tunnel, where the wrecked door from the water treatment facility was being sealed off when she arrived. Multiple layers of prefabricated plastic panels were now set up, with a smaller stream of people passing out of the double-wide doors on this side.

  After a moment, Roslyn confirmed people were coming through in batches of twenty—as many as the two class six decontamination chambers they’d brought down from Huntress could handle.

  With the chambers operating alternately, twenty people entered the tunnel every thirty seconds—and Roslyn didn’t see an easy way out. Whoever Bolivar had co-opted to assemble the quarantine array hadn’t considered the chance anyone might be leaving.

  That was…probably reasonable. Sighing, Roslyn pulled Bolivar’s current coordinates and ran a calculation as she stepped to the side of the crowd heading deeper underground.

  A few seconds later, she dropped from the air next to the Guardia officer, grunting as she absorbed the impact. Without knowing what was around Bolivar, she’d teleported high enough that she’d have landed on someone instead of appearing in them.

  “Sir!” Bolivar greeted her. “The quarantine arrays are set up and the infection zone hasn’t reached us yet.”

  “That’s good news. How close are we?” Roslyn asked.

  He grimaced.

  “It’s not good news,” he told her. “We are now surrounded on all sides. Closest approach is seven kilometers on the north side. There are Marines hanging out above the closest group, and they’re eyeballing a mob of about twenty thousand.”

  “Who’s left inside that zone?” Roslyn asked. Nueva Portugal was a large city, with two million people spread across a zone sixty kilometers or so across. Even with the park, though, there should have been at least a few hundred thousand people within seven kilometers of the park.

  “A lot of people,” Bolivar admitted. “We’ve got almost ten thousand people underground, I think, but the decontamination slows us to forty a minute…and we don’t know what the infection radius of someone carrying the weapon is.”

  “We need to decon everyone,” Roslyn agreed. “Fuck. How many, Bolivar?”

  “We’ve probably got another fifteen thousand gathered around the park now,” he told her. “Maybe twenty. But there are a hundred and thirty thousand people living inside that radius of us, Commander Chambers.

  “We can’t even save them. We’re ordering everyone who can to shelter in place. Seal their windows and doors as best they
can. Most homes have enough air to last the occupants a day or two if they manage to get a proper seal.”

  “It’s all we can do,” Roslyn agreed. “And if the danger zone around an infected is low enough, it might be enough just for them to lay low.”

  “Maybe,” he agreed. There was very little hope in his tone, though. Somehow, Bolivar kept going—but Roslyn could tell he was beyond hoping for more than saving everyone in front of him.

  Roslyn had to hope for more. She wasn’t sure what the answer was going to be yet, but she had a Royal Martian Navy destroyer and half a dozen fully trained Mages. Whether the answer was firepower or magic, she would find a way.

  “Sir, this is Sergeant Colburn,” the Marine reported in. “We’re flying overwatch on your closest problem. What can we do for you, Commander?”

  “Video relay to start, Sergeant,” Roslyn told him. She was looking at an overall map, but red icons didn’t tell her what she was really dealing with. She needed that view, that understanding of the nature of the problem.

  “Understood. Linking through now.”

  The projection on her helmet HUD shifted. A square view from the assault shuttle’s cameras lit up, and she zoomed in on the threat and shivered.

  Even mob was the wrong word. It was more like a flood of human beings. The front and sides of the flood were smashing into doors, vehicles, anything that looked like it might give way. There was no attempt to use handles or anything like that. Just full-body smashing into accessways until they gave way.

  “It’s terrifying, Commander,” Colburn said quietly. “We’ve been watching this for twenty minutes now, and I just feel sick. They’re moving fast and I’m not sure how much is being left behind them.”

  “Me either, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied. “I had to…see. It’s too easy to just mark them as hostile on the map and carry on. Looking at them…”

  “They’re…rabid, mindless,” Colburn told her. “But they’re just…people.”

  “I know. All my plans are built on that, Sergeant, but I need more data.”

  She heard the Marine swallow.

  “We are Her Majesty’s Marines, sir,” she said quietly. “Lieutenant Evanson can get you whatever you need.”

  “I don’t need Evanson right now, I don’t think,” Roslyn replied. “Your people have sensor drones, yes?”

  “Of course,” he confirmed. “There’s two loaded in the default combat loadout for the exosuits. We didn’t have time to adjust from default.”

  “All right. I want you to start deploying the sensor drones into the crowd,” Roslyn told him. “If the Orpheus weapon is in the air, there will be densities where the drones can detect it. In infection mode, it can’t just dissolve when hit with radio waves.

  “But even so, passive scanners only. I want the drones taking air samples and examining them for nanites.” She grimaced. “I presume I don’t need to tell you to destroy those drones well away from the shuttle?”

  “I’m not sure I’d bring them back aboard if you ordered it, sir, without a damn good reason,” Colburn admitted. “There might end up being accidental weapons discharges.”

  Marines were…sometimes a bit too honest.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Roslyn said drily. “But believe me, Sergeant, if I do order you to bring one back aboard, there’ll be a reason.”

  “What are we looking for, sir?” Colburn asked.

  “I need to know the infection radius, Sergeant,” she told him. “Right now, I have to assume that as soon as that mob reaches the park, everyone still above ground is effectively dead. But if it turns out that they’re only infecting people within a few meters or just those they touch…the options change.”

  “I see, sir.” Colburn paused. “I’ll get my people on it. We’ll have you your data as quickly as possible.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Anything I can do to save these people, Commander. At any cost.”

  Roslyn watched through the feed as the pigeon-sized drones plunged toward the mob. For a few seconds, even knowing the purpose, she thought they were going to crash into the mob, but then the engines turned on about ten meters up, sweeping across the top of the mob.

  Mindless as the Orpheus infected were, they still noticed the drones. Colburn wasn’t bothering to be subtle—if nothing else, he was in an assault shuttle that was only another hundred meters up.

  Several people jumped into the air, trying and failing to reach the robotic aircraft before falling. At least one of those was promptly crushed under the chaotic movement of the mob of infected, forcing Roslyn to wince and close her eyes.

  “We are orbiting at ten meters,” one of the Marines reported. “Air samples are being picked up and analyzed. Passive opticals aren’t picking up anything, but we are talking nanotech…”

  There was a pause.

  “Air samples are clean so far as we can tell,” Colburn finally told Roslyn. “Ten meters up is probably equivalent to something like…a hundred meters horizontally for a nanite, though. We’ll dump the air and lower the drones for another pass.”

  “Carry on, Sergeant,” Roslyn replied. “I’m listening, but you know what you’re doing, and I’ve got a few other irons in the fire.”

  The mob Colburn was orbiting was the closest to the park by a kilometer or so and moving quickly—but it wasn’t the only chaotic mob of Orpheus infected. The only thing that had saved them so far was that the infected couldn’t use vehicles of any kind. Even fast walking for a mob was only four or five kilometers an hour.

  No matter what happened, Roslyn had an hour. That would only get another twenty-five hundred to three thousand people underground, though, and she wasn’t sure how many people they could fit in the lab.

  If they had ten thousand in there, they were probably already starting to fill the spaces outside the decon chambers.

  “Drones are circling at five meters,” Colburn’s Marine reported. “Still nothing at this level on the exterior optics and we are taking air samples.”

  Roslyn figured there had to be some level of dispersal from the infected. As Colburn had noted, though, for every meter the nanites went up, they probably spread out ten.

  But if five meters up was clear, that gave her a radius she could engage the infected at. She didn’t want to kill them—but if push came to shove, the Guardia could probably hold the infected a hundred meters away.

  They’d kill a lot of innocent people doing it, and Roslyn wasn’t sure she’d be able to live with herself for giving the order…but it would save the lives of everyone in the park.

  “Internal air examination shows nanites at roughly two-point-one parts per billion,” Colburn said quietly. “I don’t know if that’s enough to infect—I’m going to guess not—but it does suggest a maximum limit.”

  “Understood. We don’t really have another use for those drones right now, do we?” Roslyn asked.

  “No, sir,” Colburn agreed. “We’re going to cycle them through at each meter as we go and see, well, how low we get.”

  The answer turned out to be “one hundred and eighty-two centimeters from the top of the crowd.”

  That was the height at which the Orpheus infected started to successfully yank drones out of the air and smash them on the ground.

  “Okay, so they’ve wrecked fourteen drones,” Colburn concluded after taunting the crowd for a minute. “But we now have data at one-point-eight meters from the infected.”

  “And?” Roslyn asked.

  “At one-point-eight meters, we’re up to about a hundred parts per million, which my counter-bioweapon training suggests is infectious,” he told her. “Given the replicating abilities we know of for the nanites, I’d honestly say anything above one PPM is infectious. Which put our safe radius somewhere between three and four meters.

  “I could send out new drones to confirm that, sir.”

  “Faced with a mass human wave attack by unarmed civilians, Sergeant, would you be prepared to guarantee they would
n’t get within fifty meters?” Roslyn asked instead.

  Colburn gave a tired sigh.

  “In this circumstance, sir, our biggest problem is ammunition. Most of our arsenal will overpenetrate against that kind of…target,” he said carefully. “We tend to assume that we can neutralize unarmored opponents with Nix or SmartDarts.

  “A human wave attack like the infected will launch… We only carry so many bullets, sir. And we can’t risk bringing the Marines into the park, can we?”

  “No,” Roslyn agreed. “What we can do is set up a perimeter around the park. Blockade streets, funnel the infected. We have an hour, Sergeant. Even without bringing the shuttles within, let’s say, two hundred meters of the refugees, can we secure the area?”

  “The infected may well just go over any barrier we build,” Colburn warned. “I’ve been watching them. We can’t funnel them on a large scale; they will go over instead of around. On a stack of bodies, if necessary.”

  “But we can still hold a perimeter?”

  “It’s a three-kilometer-wide park,” he noted. “Roughly square, so twelve kilometers of perimeter. If we bring all the Marines from Huntress and build the positions right…maybe.

  “If nothing else, we can buy time. With exosuits for us and biohazard gear for Guardia volunteers, we can keep them a hundred meters from the civilians for a while. Maybe long enough.”

  “If you have an answer for how long is enough, Sergeant, you’re ahead of me,” Roslyn told him. “Pull the shuttles back to the edge of the park. Leave drones orbiting over that mob; it’s our first threat.”

  She shivered.

  “I don’t want to order this, Sergeant,” she said quietly, “but if the only way I can save fifty thousand of this city’s people is to kill another fifty thousand…what choice do I have?”

  “I don’t know, sir,” he admitted. “May I pray that we find that choice?”

  “There’s Marines in the lab working on it,” Roslyn told him. “Pray away, Sergeant. If anyone can do the impossible, I trust in your Corps.”