The Orion Plague

by David VanDyke

  He swallowed. “Yes, Top.”

  She stared at him for a moment more. She felt her eye twitching as she shifted her gaze to her team. “It’s a new game, people. Nanotech, biotech, now cyborg-tech. Our enemies are not human anymore.”

  “It’s like I told you,” Bill choked. “These things can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be turned into Edens. They will not stop. Ever. Until they are dead. Or we are.”

  “So put your inhibitions aside,” Repeth reiterated to her team. She turned to shove Bill into the Beast. “Let’s go. Back to base, post-haste.”

  -6-

  They strapped Rick down to a metal table that matched the cyborg guard’s shiny forehead. His struggles seemed completely useless as these men’s casually exerted strength forced him into position. He felt like a child in the grip of powerful adults, and remembered those Terminator movies he had watched as a kid, trapped by his muscular dystrophy in his wheelchair. He used to imagine he could be a Terminator, not a bad one but a nice one, like in the second and third movies, with metal bones and muscles that made his wasting disease moot.

  These men were like those cyborgs, slightly more emotional perhaps but the resemblance was obvious. He even heard, or imagined he could hear, the whining of servomotors, the creak of artificial tendons, the snick and screech of metallic joints and mechanisms.

  Here comes Frau Blucher, of course, he thought hysterically as the dumpy woman walked into his range of vision. “Where’s Doctor Evil?” he asked aloud, humor his only defense.

  The woman cocked her head at him, birdlike. Her right eye abruptly rotated around the axis of its pupil and that orifice contracted like a camera lens iris. She smiled mechanically. “Good afternoon, Doctor Johnstone. You see, I have great respect for your academic achievements, once I learned who you were and found your dossier. Bachelor’s at eighteen, Master’s at nineteen, doctorate from the University of Johannesburg at twenty-one, all while building one of the most effective cyber-warfare programs ever devised. You gave us fits, with your intrusions and misdirections and disruptions. In fact, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that you were instrumental in our present diminution of our power. So it is fitting that you should be instrumental in restoring it.”

  He had started feeling a bit better once she started talking. At least it gave him something to focus on and a playing field where he might compete. “You’re monologing,” he said with as much cheerfulness as he could muster.

  That head-cock came again. “What?”

  “You know. When the hero is strapped to the death machine the villain starts monologing. Blathering on about how clever she is to have trapped him and how she is going to bring about his slow and agonizing death.”

  She raised an eyebrow and replied, “Ah, you Americans and your sense of humor,” in a cartoonish Russian accent. “You see,” she reverted to her own voice, “I’m not a robot, I can laugh. Nor am I going to bring about your slow and agonizing death.” She patted his arm sympathetically. “But there will be pain.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief.”

  “You may not think so when it’s over.”

  “Do I get to know what’s going on, or are you savoring the suspense?”

  “I am, a little. It’s enjoyable to have you in my clutches, Dr. Johnstone.” She made birdlike claws at him and smiled impishly.

  He nodded, or tried to, since his head was also pinned to the table. “Pardon me for asking, but are you a Psycho too?”

  “Too?”

  “Well, I figured that guy they called the Professor was. Nobody else I’ve seen around here qualifies, but you can’t be an Eden. And you have some kind of cybernetic implant for an eye. It would take a brave normal to undergo such an operation without the benefit of augmented healing processes.”

  Her smile was sardonic. “Perhaps we have simply overcome the virus’ virtue effect?”

  At first he thought she was joking again, but her expression did not change. She seemed sincere. Rick’s blood ran cold and his stomach tightened. If that were true then they had a frightening advantage. All the healing power of the Eden Plague but none of its strictures. Nothing to keep them from designing these cyborg super-soldiers with the power of machines and the biological advantages of immortal Edens. And the morals of robots.

  “How did you do it?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

  “Oh, come now, Doctor. That would be telling.” She made her thumb and forefinger into a circle and placed it to her cybernetic eye in a kind of salute.

  “I get it. I’m your Prisoner. Funny. What’s your name, anyway?” he asked. Keep her talking. As long as we’re talking, she isn’t doing anything to me. And there’s always a chance she might become sympathetic. She seems to want my…respect? Approval? Or perhaps just my fear.

  “You may call me Shari. I am the foremost expert in bionic cybernetics in…well, in the world, I believe. Certainly I have the most advanced program.” Her voice rose. “Even your nuclear strike on our government did not derail my research, and it is my advances that will bring us back to power and usher in a glorious new age of Die Übermenschen!”

  He stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She shrugged. “Kind of. Over the top?”

  “No, not at all. Very inspiring.”

  “Seriously…Rick…” Her demeanor became coy as she ran her hand up his naked arm. His skin tried desperately to crawl away from it. “I would like to have you on our side, rather than stuck in that mindless quad of yours designing tiny subroutines and planting worms. Oh, yes, we know about them, trying to corrupt our network.”

  Interesting…she didn’t mention my logic bombs that will interfere with the servo-control programs. He kept any hope off his face and shrugged as if trying to conceal disappointment. “Can’t blame me for trying.”

  “Of course not,” she said, mock-soothing. “But we would like your brilliance, not merely your compliance. To get that, we will have to do a little tinkering,” she tapped his skull, “up here.”

  Fear shot through him then as he realized that there was something worse than torture. Tampering with his brain might do permanent damage to his mind. Over time the Eden Plague might be able to reconstruct the organic functions of his nervous system but it could not restore lost memories or personality.

  Terror must have shown on his face, for Shari stroked it with a cruelly gentle hand. “There is no need to fear. We will take all that away from you, and there will be only happiness, an endless sea of pleasure, as long as you do what we wish. I hope that you will be a most important instrument in returning the rightful Unionist government to power.”

  She leaned down and pressed her soft warm lips to his, a dry kiss that nevertheless promised much more. He tried to squirm away but the bindings held him helpless. “Shoot him up,” Shari said, and another white coat with a large needle advanced on him carefully, to sting his thigh with metal sharpness.

  The pain started there, a hot sensation that spread up his veins and through his arteries. Agony tore a scream from his lips as Shari watched with heady pleasure. “It burns!”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “It does, and it will. You will burn, my little man. You will burn for me.”

  ***

  He existed in the fire, aflame but not consumed. Films of red lined his vision like celluloid curtains, and his limbs floated on coals of pain. Glowing brands rooted through his blood vessels, gouging channels in his muscles, through his flesh. Nerves died and were reborn, rerouted, rekindled until the flames warmed his bones and the touch of pain brought him to ecstasy. Inside the chambers of his mind he sobbed, unable to control or resist.

  As he floated in the womblike furnace, Shari was always there, always whispering. He hated himself, but she became his anchor, his focus, the only thing he could hold onto even as he cried out save me to a silent God. Her presence brought him shivering rapture even while shriveling his soul with hellfire.

  He desperately held on to what he could
, reciting to himself, My hope is in the Lord and forgive me, over and over, trying to absolve himself of responsibility for what he could not control. Not my fault, he told himself, then cried out as his body and brain betrayed him with seizures of heaven and hell once again.

  -7-

  “The conditioning is proceeding satisfactorily?” The voice came from an impeccably-manicured man of young middle age, from a face well known to the viewers of the Union News Network over the past decade: Winthrop Jenkins. No number after his name, but he was the eldest living of the Jenkins clan and thus should control great power and wealth. In his estimation the Septagon Shadow program was the key to reclaiming what he had lost with the fall of the Unionists.

  “Of course,” Sharion Prandra purred. “I am seeing to it personally. Still,” she arched one eyebrow, “nothing is certain when dealing with such bleeding-edge techniques and technologies.” She turned to gesture at the Burn Room visible through the one-way glass, at Rick Johnstone strapped to the stainless-steel table.

  “So you have told me. I understand, Doctor, you need to cover your ass in case it doesn’t work. Don’t worry, I’m not the type of man to punish the occasional hiccup, as long as your overall record demonstrates your effectiveness.”

  “It does, and it will, Your Eminence. The rewiring of his nervous system and the electrostimulator web we have implanted in his brain is the most effective way we have identified for overcoming any compunctions he may have against obeying our directives. Pavlovian conditioning – pain and pleasure, fed directly into the respective cerebral structures – has proven irresistible.” She smiled, a thing of queasy satisfaction.

  “I suppose if I was hammered with waves of pain or orgasmic pleasure, I would learn to comply as well.” Jenkins’ voice was musing, detached, belying his horrified feeling at contemplating mind control – no, to be fair, to contemplate anyone controlling his mind.

  “It’s not merely the pain and pleasure, it’s the fear of pain and the hope of pleasure that really breaks them,” Shari answered. “Did you know that intermittent and semi-correlated consequences – good or bad – are many times more effective than predictable ones?”

  “Really?” Jenkins raised his eyebrows in skepticism. “That seems counterintuitive. In politics, I always want to follow through on my threats and promises.”

  “With your peers, perhaps. But what about your subordinates? Do you always, every time give them a word of praise for a good job, or a reprimand? Or only now and again, keeping them guessing?”

  “Point taken. So you are saying that this strategy is more effective for those who are dependent.”

  “Precisely, sir. You have gone to the root of it, forgive my imprecision, I only spoke of my own…discipline.” She smiled again, obsequious.

  I know when I’m being played, Winthrop thought, but it doesn’t matter. She’s the best at what she does. Better to let her think I swallow her clumsy manipulations, as if I’m one of her subjects. He shivered inside at that thought. That’s one thing I’ll never do, put myself under her knife.

  Waving airily, he responded, “Nothing to forgive, Doctor. Your work is excellent, and will be rewarded.” He raised one eyebrow. “Intermittently.”

  “Ah, very amusing, sir. We do appreciate the resources lavished on us and endeavor to do our best. Speaking of resources…”

  “I am sorry I can’t increase your budget right now. As the illegitimate government asserts more control, I am finding it harder and harder to acquire what we need. Some units and people are still loyal, but we need to get the kinks worked out of your Shadow Men and put them to use. They must be made reliable!”

  “Yes, it is hard to instill fear in a cyborg, and too much pain will make them timid. We are continuing to test approaches.”

  Jenkins smacked a fist into his palm for emphasis. “This is even more important as Unionist currency is now worthless. If I did not have substantial holdings in the Neutral States we would have nothing at all, remember that. Also, Doctor, should you ever consider hosting me in one of your Burn Rooms, I will remind you that I have had some very effective psychological blocks put in to my mind. I also have some loyal men who would investigate…and they have weapons and tools that even your Shadows would find…effective.”

  He saw her face grow still as she nodded. She is more correct than she knew, he thought. Fear of consequences is more effective than punishment itself.

  “Of course, sir. We are all loyal to you and the Unionist Party here.”

  “I am the Party now, Doctor, and the Party values your loyalty in the exact measure you extend it. Now, shall we discuss how we will employ this tool you are creating?”

  “Of course, sir.” She opened the door to exit the observation room, then led him to her well-appointed office. They sat on her soft black leather sofa, deliberately set low so her short legs were comfortable but bigger, taller people felt odd. Jenkins got up after a moment and perched on its arm, a slightly more appropriate seat for his tall frame.

  Shari folded her hands on her knees and asked, “What did you have in mind for him, sir?”

  Jenkins rubbed his neck tiredly. He wished there was a simple way to get rid of the Eden Plague virtue effect without all this cyberware, which would compromise his free will even more than the virus itself. He could use some healing and energy right about now. “I presume network cyber-warfare is not an option.”

  She shook her head. “He will retain his skills, but I cannot speak for his motivation, his drive, his ‘edge.’ Creative talents cannot be bludgeoned into achievement, only coaxed. My methods are not sufficiently refined to make him an effective hacker for us. At least, no more effective than the others working for us.”

  “Then my hope is that we can use him as a mole. Release him, let him escape or be rescued. Use your hypnoconditioning to make him forget his alterations.”

  The Doctor looked skeptical. “Such hypnotics will only hold for a brief time. A week, perhaps two. Then the memories of what we have done will break through. If he reports himself, we will immediately lose him. We will also be providing our enemies with some of our technology to examine, and they have an extensive research program.”

  Jenkins stood up to pace. “Then you will wire him with some kind of self-destruct that will automatically burn him out, slag all the cyberware inside him, either when we send him a signal or when he exhibits certain proscribed behavior. You can do that, can’t you?”

  Shari laughed. “A simple matter. We can’t control his thoughts, but we can match his actions, including things he sees, to a heuristic decision matrix that will –”

  “Spare me the details, Doctor. I have full confidence that you can do what you promise. Just…do not overpromise. I would rather be told honestly you cannot do something, than to be misled. That,” he said heavily, “would displease me greatly.”

  The Doctor bowed her head in apparent submission, carefully hiding a smile. Such threats did not concern her much; all powerful men made them. The trick was to be so valuable to them that they could not afford to dispense with her services, and also to never show disrespect to their faces. Such men were far more sensitive to the responses of their underlings than they would admit. Was she not a psychiatrist of the first order? She understood human motivation better than anyone, including Winthrop Jenkins.

  -8-

  At Battalion HQ Repeth turned Bill over to the confinement platoon, who had converted the old Dormitory into their new stockade. She understood that the hardware was already there to keep prisoners, but it still bothered her.

  When she reported to Colonel Muzik, the first thing out of her mouth was, “We need an interrogation team. Pros. This Bill guy has a window on something we knew nothing about. But in the meantime I’m going to question him. He promised me to spill his guts in exchange for his life, so I need everything I can get from him, before he decides to get cute.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we go to Pax River.”

&
nbsp; Colonel Muzik cleared his throat. “Not alone, you’re not.”

  Repeth’s shoulders set stubbornly. “I have a good team, sir.”

  “And you can keep them. But five people and one souped-up Hummer is not enough for an assault. I’ve already asked for some stealth drone imagery and once we get it we’ll have an idea what we’re up against. You did fantastic work but this is now bigger than either of us.”

  “So we do all the hard stuff and the regulars go in and get the attaboys.”

  Muzik looked at Repeth, appalled. “You never used to care about who got the glory, as long as the mission got done.”

  She slammed a fist into the wall, leaving a hole in the drywall. “And I don’t really care about that now. I’m just tired of us line doggies doing all the scut work while others sit back and wait for the sexy jobs. And,” she took a deep breath, “I have to be there. If Rick is there, I have to be there.”

  Muzik nodded slowly. “You know, Jill, you’re not making it any easier for me to have confidence in your state of mind.”

  “What, you don’t trust me all of a sudden?”

  “What I don’t trust is your objectivity. It may not be my call anyway. Look, go interrogate your prisoner. Don’t wreck him; he may hold the key to getting Rick back. I’ll see what I can do about getting you in on the Pax River op. And Jill?” he said as she turned to go. “Remember, Professor Stone is still out there. You’re a cop now. Tracking down criminals is your main job, not rescue. It would be better for everyone if you thought about that.”

  The door slammed behind her. “Don’t tell me what my freakin’ job is,” she muttered under her breath as she stomped down the hall. “My job is to find my boyfriend. Fiancé. Whatever.” Shoving her way into the womens’ latrine, she glared at the Spec-4 washing her hands there. “Get out,” she snarled. “GET OUT!”

  The woman bolted, and Jill locked the door. Turning both faucets on full blast, she plunged her face into the water just in time to convince herself she wasn’t crying.