“You think the crawdads gonna sit around and wait for you, Marine?” Lashmeier bawled.
“I don’t give a stone cold—” Dane hissed through his teeth—even they seemed to be in pain.
“What did you say, Marine!?” Lashmeier shouted. “I can’t hear you, Private Williams!”
“Sir yes sir!” Dane managed to gasp. “The crawdads aren’t going to wait for me, sir!”
“Then what in the sweet name of Washington are you doing down there, Marine!?” Lashmeier gave his final shout the truly epic Lashmeier-effect, and Dane found his body trying, at least, to comply.
He shuffled one gloved hand up and gave another grunt as he pulled—
“That’s it, Marine. You show them crawdads what they’re facing,” Lashmeier was shouting.
Just then Dane’s hand slipped inside his climbing glove, slick with sweat.
“Ach!” He made a scream as one hand flailed back, and suddenly, he was falling, seeing the angry face of Sergeant Lashmeier above, framed by picture-perfect blue sky.
“Aiiii!” Dane screamed as suddenly the security line that they weren’t supposed to use pulled sharp against his weight. He felt as though it almost cut him in half as he rebounded.
Brace! Brace! He remembered to bring his knees up and one hand out just in time as he smacked into the cliff wall, causing a jarring jolt to stun through his knees, hip, and shoulders.
“WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!?” Lashmeier was shouting at him, and even though it was full-Lashmeier, the voice was much further away now. Dane realized, when his heart stopped pumping at a thousand beats per minute, that he was now dangling three feet off the ground.
“Get yourself down, Private. Detach and follow us back to base!” Lashmeier bellowed angrily, turning back to the others and disappearing from view.
Wonderful. Dane sighed wearily as he lowered himself to the floor and fumbled with the hooks and catches that had kept him attached to the wall. There was a wide but steep path where the cliff met grass—which would have been far easier, Dane thought—which began the three-mile march back to Fort Mayweather.
Dane didn’t even think that he could make the path ascent right now, let alone the trek.
What a joke. He cursed himself, still trying to get his tired hands to work out the ropes as his legs started to spasm with pain.
“Ach!” he hissed in agony, slapping the top of the medical unit triggering the cool release of Vito-neura to flood into his system. For a moment, he lay there on his back, looking up at the sky and waiting for the trembling to subside.
WAAOWAAO!
Just as the distant air-raid sirens flared.
Air raid! Panic ran cold through Dane’s body, forcing him to his feet faster than any pain-blocker that Dr. Heathcote had ever given him.
But still, even as he tumbled into a crouch, he waited to count the number of rising whoops.
WAO-WAO-pause. WAO-WAO-pause.
“Two.”
It wasn’t the constant rise and fall of a base-wide muster of imminent attack. So far, there hadn’t been any. In fact, there hadn’t been ANY return attacks of the Exin since that awful first.
“But two is the storm front call,” Dane knew, turning around and looking up to see that, yes, there was the edge of dirty yellow-gray clouds heading in their direction.
Clouds that are laced with more virus, Dane growled. In the short month that he had been at Fort Mayweather—predominantly doing training and square-bashing every day, with an occasional hour of recreation time—they had also been given daily briefings on the State of Emergency by Sergeant Lashmeier.
“Looks like the crawdads are generous,” had been the way that the sergeant had introduced their new threat. “The Exin virus is airborne, and six weeks after the initial attack, remains infective.”
The sergeant had left the rest of the camp-wide briefing to Dr. Heathcote, who had led them all through a dizzying set of graphs and holo-slides, to state, basically, that there were “blooms” of the Exin virus hanging around in the atmosphere. They were being pushed down to infect more people every now and then by storm fronts.
Heathcote had talked about thermal expansion and gyres, none of which Williams understood, but the result was the same—Lashmeier was right, the Exin were a race that just kept on giving.
“Hey! Bad Luck!” shouted a grunt of a voice as heavy feet pounded down the slope of the hill.
Oh, wonderful. Private Osgud, a heavy-set guy with skin as pink as a crawdad himself, had been sent to make sure Williams didn’t get infected. Again.
Can I even get double-infected? The thought flashed through Williams’ head. No time to answer, though, as Osgud was skidding to a halt.
“Get up! Sarge says I’m to take you to Bunker Three,” Osgud grumbled, spitting the words and squinting his small, dark eyes at Williams. “He reckons you can’t make it back to base in time—which is probably about right for someone like you.” Osgud was a fellow private-nothing, but it turned out that Osgud thought he was a private-something, and had so far been determined to point out to every other would-be M.I.D. Marine that Dane was a waste of space and a cripple.
Yeah, not what the Diversity and Equality Team call me. Dane rolled his eyes just at the sight of him.
“I said get up!” Osgud grumbled, making absolutely no effort to actually follow Lashmeier’s orders and help Dane.
Not that I want help from you, Dane thought, pushing himself to his feet. Luckily, the special blockers and antigens were getting to work, and he didn’t feel the cramps or the shooting pain running through his legs.
“This way, I’m not hanging around to get infected by you,” Osgud growled. He broke into a run back the way he had come, away from the cliff and the slope, and toward the dark line of the pine trees and the many miles of running tracks that snaked their way through it.
“You get infected by the virus, not by me, you stupid son of a…” Dane watched the large shape running away from him and sighed before breaking into a run himself.
The dark clouds on the horizon were approaching fast. Dane was beginning to wonder if the rest of the training corps could get back to the relative safety of base camp before it hit.
Lashmeier will probably take them to Bunker Two, Dane was thinking. He had started to gain on Osgud, despite the cool lack of sensation in his legs. Maybe because of it.
There were lots of support bunkers dotted over the large tract of forest and training ground that comprised Fort Mayweather. Each one was now stocked with breathing masks and armaments, just in case this very thing happened.
Which is happening fast… Dane put on an extra spurt of speed as he crossed into the cool darkness under the pine trees. Bunker Three was only a few twists and turns away.
“Ooof!” Suddenly, Dane’s foot slipped on a piece of still-damp mulch from last night’s shower of rain. He hit the dirt and rolled, skidding against a tree, and there was a tearing noise.
When he looked down, he saw that his Vito-neura injector was gone, torn from his thigh as he hit the dirt.
No no no! Dane instantly started panicking. He threw a glance upward to see that the blue space between the clouds was starting to turn gray with the front winds of the coming summer squall.
And the Exin virus.
And Osgud, it appeared had already skidded to a halt and was turning back to him, but it wasn’t to offer the hand of brotherhood.
In Private Osgud’s hands was the Vito-neura injector unit, with one buckle torn off.
“Hmm.” Osgud looked at it for a moment, then looked at Dane, then looked up at the skies above…
“Give it back and let’s get to safety!” Dane hissed angrily, pushing himself to his feet.
Private Osgud looked at Dane, then grinned maliciously. “Come and get it, cripple-boy,” he snarled. He turned with a spray of pine needles and mulch, still holding the injector unit, to charge around the last corner to Bunker Three.
No!
Dane broke into a r
un, grateful that he had just been injected by the serum. The panic was rising in his chest, though, as he pushed his strange legs faster.
Don’t focus on the pain. Focus on your goals! He tried to remember one of the sergeant’s motivational speeches.
Well, currently my goal is not to die in hideous pain. It was an easy one to focus on as he rounded the bend to Bunker Three, seeing the squat concrete dome sitting there with its door open. Osgud had already hit the door release and vanished inside—taking Dane’s injector unit with him, apparently.
Jackass! Dane swore, running faster as the dark storm clouds started to gather and spread along the canopy overhead.
And the first drips of rain started to fall.
No, no, no!
Dane ran to the open doorway.
Which was suddenly filled by Osgud. One meaty hand caught Dane on the chest and shoved him back.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Dane said, feeling the first drip of rain slide down his cheek.
Don’t wipe it. Don’t spread any possible contamination of the Exin virus. Dane lay on his back in astonishment. He looked up at Osgud still inside Bunker Three’s door, grinning down at him.
“What the hell are you doing!?” Dane scrambled to his feet once again.
“Looks like you’re infected, cripple,” Osgud snarled happily.
“Osgud, let me in, you idiot!” Dane bawled, starting forward, intending to swing at Osgud if he had to.
The dark clouds were entirely over their little clearing now, and the wind was starting to rise and howl through the trees.
How long till full exposure—again? Dane was panicking.
But Dane pulled himself up short of taking a shot at Osgud when the much larger private held up his medical injector and waved it as if he were about to throw it.
“Say please.” Osgud was grinning, clearly enjoying himself.
Another drip of early rain hit Dane’s shoulder, and he felt it running over his muscle in excruciating intensity.
“Fine. Please. Goddamn it please, let me in, Osgud!” Dane snapped, for his Marine brother to lightly jump back, pointing to the decon booth just inside the door. Dane wasted no time in jumping into the small shower cubicle. Almost scalding hot water poured over his body as the main bunker door slammed shut.
Luckily, although the Exin virus was terrifying in its lethality, it was also fairly easy to eradicate. Just hot water, Dr. Heathcote explained, would force it to “break its covalent bonds”—whatever that meant.
Dane waited until he felt his clothes were completely soaked before he hit the door release button to step outside of the decontamination chamber.
“Osgud, you piece of…” Dane immediately started to say as he emerged into the central room of the bunker.
“Uh uh.” Osgud was leaning over the central steel table. Behind him, the walls were filled with the metal lockers that contained breathing units and rifles and first aid kits. A further open doorway led to more rooms like this, burrowed under the ground of Virginia.
Osgud had Dane’s medical injector on the table, belly up, and was tapping it on the steel suggestively, as if to say that he could smash it at any moment.
“You gotta be nice now,” Osgud said with a grin. “This is a lesson, Williams. A guy like you shouldn’t be here. A guy like you is only going to slow the rest of us down, and Lashmeier is going to work that out, sooner or later.”
Tap-tap-tap, went the medical unit on the steel.
“Osgud…” Williams started to growl at the man. “If you damage that, I swear to god, I’ll…”
“You’ll what? Tell on me? File a complaint?” Osgud gave the sleek unit another strong tap. “I knew you were soft, Williams!” the larger man said with a snort of laughter, flicking the unit across the table.
Dane caught it just in time on the opposite edge. Focus on your goals. Dane seethed, doing his best to contain his rage as he inspected his life-saving device. Dane knew that he was no snitch. And even though he would go toe-to-toe with the larger guy if he had to, Dane also knew the risks that he ran if he got booted out of the M.I.D.
Back to the Sacramento hospital. Back to a short life of pain, he knew only too well.
A moment later, there was a sudden glitch of noise from the base transmitter system, linked up by underground lines to each and every bunker.
“ATTENTION! ATTENTION! SCANS SHOW 0.00 PARTS OF VIRAL AGENT. ALL CLEAR. REPEAT: ALL CLEAR.”
They had been lucky, it seemed. This particular sudden summer squall hadn’t been loaded with Exin germ particles. But the next one might be.
“I’ll catch you later,” Private Osgud promised, shouldering his way out of Bunker Three and heading back to base camp. He left the soggy and sodden Dane Williams inside.
It turned out that some of the finest examples of humanity on Earth weren’t so fine after all. Dane groaned.
5
Discoveries
>>Run Simulation…
Dr. Sylvia Heathcote worked late into the night, surrounded by the blue gleam of holoscreens from her laboratory in the heart of Fort Mayweather. She was used to working odd hours. Even before the Federal Marine Corps, she had often found herself cycling to her suite at John Hopkins University at all hours, whenever inspiration struck.
Sometimes, inspiration came like an unexpected friend, bearing surprise gifts of wonder… and sometimes, inspiration came like a prophet of doom.
Sylvia, with her curly blonde hair tied back in a ponytail and glasses on her face, scowled at the images she was being presented with. Above her on the large, wall-mounted screen was a blacked-out diagram of America. Green trace lines spread and swirled across it, first moving in slow-motion, and then speeding up.
She was looking at the spread of the Exinase compound through the medium of patients being admitted to special holding centers and emergency treatment facilities.
“It’s not slowing down…” She blinked at the screens. The vectors were reaching almost every part of the United States, even six weeks after the initial attack by the alien bearers of the infection.
Well, it is airborne… she said to herself. There was no way to control the spread of airborne particles, was there?
But airborne spread doesn’t explain this, she thought. The only saving grace in all of this was that the Exin virus wasn’t spread through human contact. No human could catch it off of another human or mammal. It simply didn’t do that. The infected person had to catch it from one of the sites that were originally bombarded by the alien vessels, or else get caught, full-blast, by one of the viral storm fronts…
But airborne particulates have a way of diffusing rapidly, Sylvia knew. There was simply too much turmoil up there to keep things stable. And a virus that could stay existent for over a month and still have this level of reproduction was insane.
Wait a minute…
Sylvia reached quickly to overlay the current Federal Meteorological Office survey data of current weather fronts, showing orange swirls and vortexes, combining and breaking apart over the United States.
Most of the Exinase compound matched the spread of air currents. But then Sylvia started to notice the small vortices of virus that didn’t seem to have anything to do with weather fronts at all.
What?
With a flicker of her hands, she zeroed in on those parts of the map. What was causing them? Was it a concentration of Exinase in the environment? Contaminating buildings, infrastructure?
“But Kansas and Georgia weren’t hit by the Exin,” she murmured, looking at a small spread of the virus in particular. What is going on?
It was then that inspiration struck.
There was far more Exinase in the system than there should be, if it was released at the time of the attack… Somehow, there was another source of the Exin virus—another agent that could travel, could move to different places, and could even release new Exinase particles.
“And with a spread like that…” Sylvia settled back into her ch
air, looking at the simulation of the spread of the Exinase across the United States.
“The infection will be total before year’s end,” she muttered, aghast.
Her hand moved as if by its own accord to the table-top communicator, punching the numbers for Sergeant Lashmeier and the M.I.D. The man was still awake, as he always had been whenever Heathcote called. Idly, she wondered if the man ever slept.
“Doctor? What can I do for you?” he barked in his bulldog growl of a voice.
“Sergeant, we need to speed up the program. We need Mechanized Infantry on the ground as soon as possible if we are to have any hope of surviving this.”
And of finding what’s spreading the Exin virus and stopping it, Sylvia added silently.
6
Assisted Mechanized Plate
Dane’s new home was a metal bunk in the recruit dormitory, alongside the twenty-four other newly-minted recruits of the Federation Marines. It was to here that he returned every night and rose from every morning, or, like now, had one of those rare half-hour rec periods after morning PT and breakfast, and before the rest of the day’s training began. He had a locker to call his own, and a bunkmate below, who was a much larger man named Bruce Cheng.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bruce was saying, flicking a glance over to the far corner of the room where Osgud was holding court with some of the other recruits. Word was getting around that there was trouble brewing between the “bad-luck cripple” and Osgud, and there was a tense air in the bunkroom most evenings.
A week had passed since the climb and the aborted storm siren. During that time, Dane had already had a handful of other encounters with the larger Osgud—small irritations mostly, like his wash kit going missing, or being bowled over during one of the assault courses by a passing Osgud, of course “by accident.”
Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1) Page 3
