Revenge of the Ancients: Crimson Worlds Refugees III

by Jay Allan

  West sighed softly, her exhale fogging her visor slightly. “That’s bad news, Hieronymus…and I’ve got some more. One of the enemy ships escaped. So whatever chance we had of being left alone for a while is probably gone. We’re going to have to make the use of those shots we’ve got left on the megalasers…and we’ve got to do everything possible to get the lesser platforms operable.”

  “I’ll do whatever I can, Admiral. I’m sure the fleet needs all the damage control personnel it has, but if you can detach an engineering team, I’ll see about getting some of the smaller guns up and running.”

  “You’ll have them in a few hours, Hieronymus…the best we’ve got.”

  Cutter was silent. He looked like he was going to says something, but he just stood there.

  “What is it, Hieronymus?”

  “Well, Admiral, I found something. Several things, in fact…and it gave me an idea.”

  “What? Speak?” West stared at him, looking surprised at his hesitancy. “What’s wrong, Hieronymus?”

  “Nothing, Admiral…it’s just…” He looked up from the floor. “It’s just that it’s pretty far out. A crazy idea. But when you see what I found here…”

  “Show me, Hieronymus.” She walked across the room toward him. “Nothing that comes out of that amazing mind of yours is too far out.”

  * * *

  “Saratoga, we need help. We’ve got people dropping in the corridors, and we can’t cram another patient into sickbay.” West listened to the transmission as Krantz fielded another plea for help from one of the plague-stricken ships. Nanking was a freighter, and she’d had contact with eight or more other vessels before it was discovered that her people carried the disease.

  West had given the fleet’s medical staff all the resources she could…anything they asked for that she had or could find or steal. But progress had been slow.

  Slow…more like non-existent.

  She had come to believe without a doubt that they were facing a bioweapon, all the more because there were cases on a number of ships that had not come into contact with Snow Leopard or any vessel that had. And they were still infected. At least one other ship had been hit with the strange small projectiles…though its since-relieved captain had not seen fit to report it until almost a month later.

  West no longer had the slightest doubt those mysterious projectiles were some system designed to deliver bacteriological weapons…and that they had done just that. To more than one of her ships.

  The Regent had modified the original plague…it had overcome the DNA immunity the Ancients had engineered into humanity’s ancestors. She knew she had nothing remotely like actual evidence, but she didn’t have the slightest doubt that is what had happened. But knowing didn’t help. Her medical staff had to find a cure—to a disease that had wiped out the far more advance Ancients. And if they didn’t, at least a quarter of her people would die. And that assumed she could contain the spread. It was only speculation, hope, that the enemy hadn’t found some alternate means to deliver the pathogen to other ships. If they had, she knew it was possible the entire fleet was already doomed.

  “Nanking, there are no fleet resources available beyond what you have received. You will have to make the best of what you have for now.” West listened as Krantz gave the stock reply, the same thing he’d told the others. She could hear the strain in his voice, and she understood how hard it was for him to refuse the requests for aid.

  “Saratoga, we don’t even have enough crew left standing to run the ship. Almost everything is on auto control already. Our medical staff is all infected…half of them are already bedridden. In another few hours, the dying will be completely unattended.”

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Krantz said softly. “I really am.” Then: “Saratoga out.”

  West closed her eyes. She knew her reputation, but she wasn’t the heartless monster many thought she was. It tore at her to think of her crew members, scared, sick, dying…with no help. With her refusing them help. But there was no choice. She couldn’t send more people to those ships and let them get infected. No, her first duty was to contain the spread of the disease, and with as little information as she had it was impossible to evaluate risks.

  She wouldn’t even send shuttles to dock with the stricken vessels. This was no ordinary virus…it had been designed as a weapon. To kill. By a machine of immense sophistication and intelligence. Its entire purpose was to spread. West was far from convinced the fleet’s normal decontamination procedures were reliable against this virus. It wouldn’t surprise her if it could survive the radiation of the decon chambers…or even a period of time in deep space. No, she couldn’t risk the rest of her people, not until she knew more.

  She thought of Captain Ving, of Snow Leopard and her crew. She’d been horrified when he’d made his request, and it had taken everything she had to give him her blessing. But now she realized Ving’s wisdom. He had not only saved Saratoga…he’d saved his people. Not from death, but from the final, agonizing misery of the final stages of a plague ship’s tortured end. Snow Leopard’s crew was dead, but their pain was over, and they had died as heroes, saving their comrades.

  There would be no such saving grace on Nanking. The crew there would sicken, they would drop in the hallways, lie on the floor in writhing agony. In their own vomit. The halls would reek, and there would be no one left to clean up, to bring food, medicine. Even water. No painkillers, no meds to ease the suffering. The stricken would just lie where they dropped, moaning in pain as their lives slipped away. There would be no hero’s death for any of them, no comfort, no dignity. And there was nothing she could do about it.

  Not a damned thing.

  * * *

  West looked across the table, at the astonished faces staring back at her. She knew what she had told them was hard to absorb…she’d been no less stunned when Cutter had laid out the plan to her. But she knew the brilliant scientist was right. It was the only chance they had. They might beat back another attack. Two, perhaps. Even three. But the Regent would continue to send fleets to Shangri la…and eventually they would overwhelm her people. No, there was no other way. However insanely desperate this plan seemed.

  “Admiral, how is that even possible?” Max Harmon sat across from West, and he stared back at her. No one would have called Harmon a timid man, but even he looked at her like she was crazy.

  “It is possible because of Hieronymus Cutter, Max. Because he has begun to explore the complex down on the surface. And because he found this.” She punched a button, and the display lit up, showing a document. One side appeared to be a map…and the other was a schematic of some type of vast electronic device.

  “This, my fellow officers, is a complete set of design specs for the Regent…and plans of the complex in which it is housed. It shows the way in, the weak spots in the security…everything.”

  She looked around the table, drawing a touch of perverse satisfaction as she saw the shocked looks on their faces.

  Harmon was no less surprised than anyone else. But behind the wonder on his face, the skepticism remained. “That is an amazing bit of intelligence…assuming it is accurate. It is half a millions years old, after all.”

  “Yes, Max…that is true. But all of our intelligence suggests that the Regent has done little or nothing to develop new technology or expand the imperium. Indeed, through whatever combination of programming and malfunction, it appears to have behaved in an extremely reactionary manner. Doctor Cutter believes it is unlikely the Regent would have made any major changes to itself…and I am inclined to agree. There is a good chance these schematics are an accurate depiction of the machine’s current makeup.”

  Harmon nodded. “What you say makes sense. I agree. But even if we assume that is the case…and if we believe this information will allow us to develop a feasible way to destroy the Regent, how do we get to the imperium’s home world, across dozens of jumps, through all the fleets massing to assault Shangri la?
”

  West smiled again. “We have Dr. Cutter to thank again…for another item he found down there. The Ancients who created the Regent sought to destroy it long before we entered this fight. They had turned over control of their civilization to the machine generations before, and they faced the same challenge we do…how to approach, how to reach Deneb VIII and the Regent, when the enemy controlled the imperium’s fleets. And they solved that problem.” She reached down and pressed a small button on the table.

  The doors slid to the side, and two Marines walked in, pushing an anti-grav sled with a cylinder about a meter high on it. It looked like some kind of glass, though it was clear it was a material beyond anything mankind had developed.

  “This is the only one of its kind,” West continued. “It was developed by the Ancients, a massive breakthrough even for them. According to the logs Dr. Cutter found, they developed this device to allow them to travel back to their home world undetected…and to destroy the Regent. It blocks all scanning technology known to them…it even generates a field of practical visual invisibility.”

  The room was silent. The officers present, whatever hatred they had for the Regent, had come to admire and respect First Imperium technology. Finally, Max Harmon spoke. “Did the records indicate what happened? Why they never followed through?” He was staring at the alien device, just as everyone else in the room was doing.

  “Yes, Dr. Cutter found the notes of the head of the research team. And they tell a somber tale. By the time they finished the device, the plague had infected them all, even in this hidden retreat. They had tried to protect themselves, but the infection reached them in spite of their efforts. The remaining members of the warrior caste, the team that was going to destroy the Regent…they were too weak, even to stand. They would never even have reached the Deneb system. So they changed the plan…looked to the future, to us…and they left the device, along with their plans and their logs. They left them for us. Their plan changed from one of salvation to one of vengeance.”

  She looked around the table, at each of her colleagues. “And now it has come to us. We are outgunned, outmatched, besieged. We too are facing a deadly plague, though it appears we have it confined to certain ships, at least for now. We are still able to put together an able-bodied team…and to install this device on one of our ships. And send that vessel on a desperate mission, a wild gamble beyond anything we have done during our unlikely flight over the last eighteen months. And if—if—this team can succeed, we may finally find a way to survive, to stop running…and to begin to adapt the amazing technology the Ancients left behind for us.”

  “But, Admiral…even if we are able to destroy the Regent…” Harmon paused, a concerned look on his face. “The fleets, the armed forces…they would most likely follow their last orders, wouldn’t they? The Regent isn’t in constant contact with each vessel. Clearly, they are operating under orders to destroy us. So eliminating the Regent would be satisfying, no doubt. But I don’t see how it would change the tactical situation significantly. We would still be attacked here…again and again until we are wiped out.”

  “You’re right, Max, of course.” West nodded slowly. “We cannot simply destroy the Regent, at least not before we compel it to order its forces to stand down.”

  There were a few soft laughs around the room. Everyone thought West was joking. Everyone except Max Harmon.

  “The computer virus,” he said softly.

  “Yes, Max. The virus. Dr. Cutter has improved it significantly.” She pulled a small data crystal from her pocket and set it down on the table. “He has given me the latest version. He has made some changes after reviewing the Regent’s schematics.”

  “Admiral…the Regent is an electronic brain beyond anything mankind has imagined, sophisticated in a way that defies our ability to define. I respect Dr. Cutter, and I would never bet against his brilliance…but can we really hope this virus will allow us to take control of the Regent?”

  “No, Max. Not permanently, at least. Hieronymus feels it is almost certain the Regent has ancillary security systems that would detect the infection and eliminate it.”

  Harmon was about to say something, but West continued before he had the chance. “We don’t need to control it, at least not for long. The team will introduce the virus, order the Regent to issue a command to all military forces to stand down…and then they will destroy it before it can regain control.” She hesitated and then added softly, “And hopefully they will escape.” There was doubt in her voice, and all those present knew West considered this a virtual suicide mission.

  She paused, looking around the room, gauging the reactions of the officers present. Erika West was an icy warrior, cold, unshakable in combat…but she wasn’t the leader they all expected to propose something as wild as this. The mission was a longshot, no matter how it was analyzed. It required a degree of optimism, or at least a grim belief that a small group of men and women could achieve something virtually beyond imagination. Even if the cost was their lives.

  But West didn’t look doubtful…there was nothing but confidence in her tone. “The Ancients planned this operation five hundred thousand years ago,” she said. “They prepared for it. They put the last bits of their scientific capability into building what they needed. But they were too late. By the time they were ready to go, they had succumbed to their enemy. They died…they died before they could execute the plan they’d devised to save their own civilization.”

  West stood up, and she panned her head around the table, looking at the stunned and uncertain faces around the table. “We are their descendants, we know that now. And we are going to do this, my friends. We are going to complete their mission half a million years later.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Underground Complex

  Near Landing Zone X-Ray

  Planet X108 IV – “Shangri la”

  The Fleet: 82 ships (+2 Leviathans), 19391 crew

  “Perhaps I can wear an environmental suit…or I can stay in a decon chamber.” Hieronymus Cutter was frustrated. He understood West’s caution…she was dealing with twenty ships ravaged with a deadly disease…and if the pathogen causing it existed on Shangri la, Cutter had been exposed to it. That hadn’t been a problem when the fleet was fighting and Cutter was digging through the knowledge storehouse of the Ancients. But now the fleet was sending a team to the imperial homeworld ,to Deneb VIII, to take control of the Regent with Cutter’s virus, to order the armed forces of the imperium to stand down…and then to destroy the infernal creation that had murdered its creators and then tried to do the same to mankind.

  “For six weeks? Without a break? What if there is an accident? What if the ship is hit and the decon chamber compromised?” Ana Zhukov stood along the wall, looking at Cutter. Her face was twisted into a frown, though he could barely see it through the visor of her armor. Zhukov wasn’t a Marine, but Connor Frasier had trained her well enough to get around in a fighting suit. He’d ostensibly done it to protect the second most important scientist in the fleet, though everyone who knew him realized he had other motivations that were far more personal.

  “Ana…don’t you understand? This is it. The climax of this entire nightmare. If this succeeds…”

  “I understand that, Hieronymus…but you still can’t go. Admiral West needs you here. The fleet needs you…and everything you can coax out of these defense systems. You stay. I will go to Deneb.”

  Cutter stood up abruptly, but Connor Frasier spoke first. “You see, Hieronymus? She’s been saying this all morning. Talk some sense into her.” He hesitated then added, “Please.” The worry in the giant Marine’s voice was clear.

  “Ana…this is my virus. I have to go. You can take my place here, explore the archives…and assist the admiral.”

  “Bullshit,” she spat. “You know as well as I do that we both worked on that virus. I know it as well as you do, or almost at least. I can do this…as well as you can. But I can’t repla
ce you here. We both know Almeerhan implanted things in your mind. You are the only one who can do what has to be done here.”

  She turned around toward Frasier. “And if you object so strongly to your girlfriend going on this mission, there’s an easy way to fix that.” There was an ominous tone to her voice.

  Frasier just stared back, silent.

  “How many times have I waited while you went on some dangerous mission?”

  “Ana, I’m a Marine.”

  “You think that makes it any easier to sit on Midway and hope you come back alive? And yet you expect me to stay behind, to shirk my duty, put everyone at risk just so you don’t have to worry about me?”

  Frasier just stood there.

  “Well, I don’t care what either of you think. Hieronymus has to stay here…and I’m the only other one in the fleet who understands the virus well enough to handle this.” She looked over at Cutter and then back again toward Frasier. And Admiral West agrees with me, so the two of you can just get used to it.”

  Her voice was defiant, rock solid. “Because I’m going.”

  Then she turned around and walked out of the room, right past both of them. Without uttering another word.

  * * *

  “Admiral, we’re getting more reports from across the fleet. There are five hundred eleven confirmed fatalities from the Plague. And twenty-two ships report some level of infection.” Krantz’ voice was grim. West understood. Her tactical officer had been listening to reports for the past hour, mostly sick officers providing statistics on the even sicker spacers on their ships.

  The Plague…it’s never good when something like this gets widespread enough to acquire a name.

  “Very well.” West felt sympathy for her crews. She hated feeling as impotent as she did. At least in battle, she could issue orders, develop stratagems…she could do something. But now she was just listening, waiting for updated death counts, for more ships to report increasing infection levels. “Nanking?”