The Orion Plague

by David VanDyke

  Rick Johnstone had been waiting patiently for this moment, and he cleared his throat. Seeing Absen’s look of assent, he spoke. “We have control of the drones, sir.” He looked almost…smug.

  Well, the kid deserves it, thought Absen, if he got control of the alien machines. “What can you do with them, Johnstone?”

  “Anything you want, sir.”

  “Fine. Turn them over to Helm and call for your relief. People as tired as you are make mistakes.”

  Johnstone looked like he might protest, but then nodded. “Yes, sir.” He touched a sequence of keys. “Helm, you have control of the drones. Codes and instructions are in the first file. Right now they’re inert and listening.”

  “Roger, I haff zem.” Ingold the helmsman busied himself learning how to give the alien machines instructions.

  “Before you go, Johnstone…what did you do?” Absen asked.

  “Well, sir, when I saw the drones were not just observing us but launching weapons, I jammed them with the radars using their own amplified signals. I fed them their own commands, but all randomized. I figured they couldn’t do us much harm if I could keep them confused. At the same time I had the KimPark chewing on their encryption. Once it was broken, I just worked my way inside and took them over. They’re amazing machines, sir.” Johnstone started to become enthusiastic, warming to the topic.

  “All right, and you’ll have at least a month to study them, but for now, your relief is here. Go get some sleep.” Absen watched kindly as the young man climbed down the ladder off the bridge, then turned back to his waiting officers and continued the report. “Whatever happened with that infestation someone told me about?”

  “Medical got it contained, sir.” Engineering told him. “Some kind of metal-eating bacteria. It cracked one of the reactors, and destroyed a gyro, along with some other generalized damage, but once we figured it out…nothing that bleach won’t kill, they said.”

  “Good to hear. Who’s next?”

  ***

  At the end of his shift in the command chair, Steward Repeth leaned over to whisper to her Captain. “The woman wants to see you now.”

  “Woman?”

  “The Blend, sir. Raphaela.” She tapped the squadcomm in her ear. “She’s waiting in your office.”

  “All right.” He walked the short distance to his cabin in silence until he thought of something. “How did she dock with Orion?”

  “I’m told she came over in a spacesuit, sir, through the forward airlock,” Repeth replied.

  “No baby?”

  “No baby, sir.”

  “Huh. Well, that’s her problem, I suppose.” He rounded the corner and spotted Tobias standing imperturbably outside his office. The man gave him an unfathomable look and then turned to open the door for Absen.

  Inside his office Absen stopped and lost his breath for a moment. The television pictures had been simply unable to do justice to the beauty and physical presence of the young woman – alien – Blend – in front of him. A graceful six feet, he felt like she was even taller, not used to women that nearly matched him in height. More to the point, she glowed with vitality and life, though it was a cold beauty now, with grief upon her face.

  And even packed into a shapeless coverall, he saw she was built like a brick house.

  “You can close your mouth, Captain,” she snapped. “Don’t want to drool on your nice clean deck.”

  “Sorry miss. You’re quite striking.”

  She stared at Absen in stark disbelief. “What does that matter? Alan is dead.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. Please sit down.” Absen said, walking around to place his desk between them, immediately feeling better. “The child’s father?”

  “Yes,” she said as she sat. “Marine Warrant Officer Alan Christopher Denham.” She spoke with obvious pride. “How did he die?”

  “Saving all our lives, it seems. They say he blew up the Meme ship control center. That threw it out of control, and may have allowed us to capture it. We owe him a lot.”

  Holding back tears, Raphaela nodded. “I will grieve later. Now you need to let me help you.”

  “Help us?” Absen stood up to loom over the seated woman. “I’m sorry about Denham, but I just lost two thousand or more people. Now we have five weeks of air, and my helmsman tells me our prize is on course for interstellar space if we don’t find some way to bring it back. Orion can barely fly herself home – we hope – at least into Earth orbit, and we are obviously not set up to tow anything, since accelerating involves throwing nuclear bombs out our back end. So,” he concluded heavily, leaning on his knuckles, “what is it that you can you do for us?”

  She chose not to stand, instead sitting back and folding her hands. “I’m the answer to all your problems, Captain. I can fly the Meme scout ship home, if it isn’t completely dead from the battle. I can try to save its life, and if your Marines didn’t kill all the Meme on board, I can question your prisoners. I’m your deus ex machina, but I want something in return.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I want Alan’s body, and the suit he was in.”

  Absen sat back down. “All right. And I’m not even going to ask why.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” Raphaela said with relief.

  “So now, will you go take a look at the frigate?” Absen saw her look of confusion. “The prize, the scout ship. We called it a frigate. It certainly fought like one.”

  Raphaela’s look turned to distress. “Oh, no, Captain. I have only limited information about the Meme, since much of the Watcher Base data was destroyed four thousand years ago, but I do know that that was no frigate. That was a survey ship. Like…like what the Navy would call a patrol boat, at most.” She made a hissing sound through her teeth. “If that had been a frigate, you’d all be dead, and I’d still be laying low.”

  Absen leaned back, questions churning through his mind. How the hell did Markis let this wellspring of information get away, he wondered, then remembered with shame how the problem until recently had been the alien plagues that had ultimately killed over a billion people. In that light he could understand their focus on the biological struggle instead of the military.

  “All right, I’m suitably impressed with the scary aliens. Any idea how soon they will show up?”

  “I may be able to find out from the scout ship. I suggest we make it soon. If it dies, there won’t be anything I can do about it.”

  “If what dies?” Absen asked, puzzled.

  “The Meme ship. It’s alive, just like mine. Just like the Watcher Base. All Meme machinery is biomachinery. That’s why you need me. Humanity doesn’t even have the knowledge to understand the ways to learn the language to talk to the machines to learn how to control them – are you starting to get the picture?”

  “Okay, we’re outclassed on this bio stuff, but we beat them, didn’t we?”

  Raphaela stared at Absen in silence. Finally she assented, as if giving him a gift he didn’t deserve. “Yes, you beat them. Here, in this place, like a caveman jumping a Space Marine and beating him to death with a club. Well done.” She stood up to loom over him this time, and he saw in her eyes not the young woman that had volunteered for Blending, but the weight of four thousand years staring out at him.

  She went on in an emphatic, almost angry voice. “But you and I are just a culmination of a string of brave, smart, lucky, self-sacrificing actions by a lot of people, starting with one courageous Russian biologist, a secret Jew that kept his Talmud and his Torah behind a false panel in his miserable little apartment on a bleak biological warfare research base in the middle of Siberia. One man that had the brains and guts to respond to a binary message that showed up on his computer, and keep it hidden from his Soviet masters. One man that talked to me for eleven years and never betrayed himself or me while I fed him information on how to build a virus that would save humanity from themselves and from alien invasion.”

  Absen shook his head. It was all too much. “You mea
n that you created the Eden Plague?”

  “No, a man named Aaronovsky did. It seemed like the best we could do at the time. I didn’t have the facilities to create it or I’d have just dropped it on Earth myself, so I taught him how to do it with the poor tools he had,” she said patiently. “But then the Soviet Union fell, and I lost him in the chaos. I tried to find people that would talk to me, that would believe me, but do you know how hard it is to find a competent microbiologist from beyond the orbit of Jupiter, while not being detected by SETI?”

  Absen held up his hands. “All right, all right. You convinced me; I’m in complete awe of you. More to the point, I have to trust you. I can’t see any other way. But I’m damn wary of Greeks bearing gifts, if you know what I mean.”

  “Okay, you can watch me with all your people. You won’t need those Marines for anything else but security for a while, after all.”

  “So you mean the Meme won’t be showing up with reinforcements any time soon?”

  “Like I said,” she repeated with a hint of exasperation, “I’ll let you know when I find out. But Meme think in terms of centuries, not days and weeks. I'd bet the next ship, if there is one, will be at least a few months or years in coming. Now, can we get on with it?”

  “Fine. Just make sure nothing you do scares your guards too much. They just lost a lot of their brothers and sisters to the Meme and some of them might want to take it out on you.”

  “And you wonder why I chose to look like this?” She gestured at her own body. “Most people respond well to a beautiful woman.”

  “Can’t argue with that,” he said dryly. “All right. Tobias!”

  The man opened the door. “Sir?”

  “Take Miss Raphaela here to…wherever she wants. Keep two Stewards with her as long as she’s aboard Orion, and pass the word she’s not to be impeded as long as she doesn’t do anything weird.”

  “Weird, sir?”

  “Yes, dammit, weird, and no, I don’t know what that means. Use your best judgment.” He nodded as they left, then reached for his desk computer and headset. Once he got through to MacAdam he gave instructions to the Marine Colonel about Denham’s body and Raphaela. Then he called for his officers.

  Staff meeting in space; what’s the world coming to, he thought as he entered the intelligence fusion center. It was the only intact meeting room big enough to hold most of his remaining thirty-some officers, and he wanted to talk to as many of them as he could. They snapped to attention and he told them to take their seats. Then he laid out the current situation, calling on key officers to give brief reports, and started to hammer out some kind of plan.

  It took hours; these kinds of things were ugly but necessary, even in wartime, to make sure everyone was on board and understood the whole situation. Once the meeting broke up, Absen knew the officers would – should – go back and brief their sections, ensuring everyone in the crew knew as much as anyone. It kept mistakes to a minimum, made them feel valued, and reduced the scuttlebutt. Nothing like an unchecked rumor to cause some kind of fiasco, he thought.

  ***

  On the Meme ship, Raphaela’s first priority was to see Skull’s body...and suit. As she had asked, it lay just where it had fallen, congealed in a pool of blood. Parts of him were strangely pristine, showing where the nano had healed him before it had killed him. For she knew that was what had happened; cracking his skull and the meniscus surrounding his brain had let them in, and the nano had run riot, trying in their clumsy way to repair his grey matter. Like amateur painters trying to restore an ancient masterpiece, they caused far more damage than they healed, and it was ultimately fatal.

  She reached over to the pieces of the bio-suit, kneading a part of the helmet until it gave up a tiny module under her fingers. Then she knelt and cried, placing her hand on his head, on the shaven skull that she knew so well. She stayed that way for a long while.

  -60-

  Major General Nguyen observed Colonel MacAdam from the dark corner of the Marines’ empty Operations Center where he had secreted himself. Drawing on his old skills and his new understanding of Dadirri, he had walked past sentries without a trace, murmuring words that clouded their minds for just long enough to slip by. There were no mechanical impediments to movement, such as keypads or chip-locks, at least not here. Marine guards should have been enough.

  It was the origin of his nickname “Spooky,” this art of invisibility, now perfected.

  As the Orion licked its gaping wounds, he watched MacAdam sitting in his chair alone in front of the wall of screens. Right now that wall was mostly dark, just a few pieces with displays of status graphs, showing seas of red and yellow indicators. The Colonel’s injured leg rested on the rail in front of him, the cast around his foot strangely truncated.

  Nguyen knew that those who lost mere pieces and parts were the lucky ones; much of the crew had lost their lives, many suddenly and without warning. As in naval combat on the high seas, ofttimes death came from an unseen projectile, carrying away life and limb with startling finality. But he was not concerned about MacAdam’s body, only his state of mind.

  The man banged one fist softly on the arm of his chair, rhythmically for a time, then sporadically, listening to the beat of his own internal drummer. He might have been mourning the deaths of so many of his Marines, but his other hand roved over the stubble of his own face as if undecided about something. That same hand scratched at his crew-cut hair and rubbed the back of his neck, tapped his chin or nose, or dug crusts out of eyes too long open and awake.

  If Nguyen had been a betting man, he would wager that MacAdam was struggling with a decision. So he decided the wisest course was to help the man make the right choice, rather than waiting for him to commit to the wrong one and then have to kill him. He stepped forward softly.

  “Good day, Colonel,” he said quietly.

  MacAdam started, twisting around to look at the apparition in black. “Dear God. General Nguyen?” He began to stand, but Nguyen waved him back to his seat.

  “Yes, I am here.”

  “But…why? You’re not supposed to be...” Nguyen could see thoughts churned in his head. “Why didn’t you show yourself earlier?”

  “I should think that would be obvious.”

  The big Australian rubbed his face yet again. “I’m really tired, sir. I’d appreciate it if you get to the point.”

  Interesting…he has some doubts, or some fears. He may doubt himself and his own intentions, or he may fear mine.

  “So be it. Colonel, you are a man on a knife edge. You must decide who and what you are.”

  “Bloody hell, I hate all this Eastern mystic crap. Just what is this all about?”

  “You know very well what it is about. Smythe approached you, probably in the last month before launch, perhaps as late as the day prior, and offered you a deal. Is that Western and direct enough for you, Colonel?”

  MacAdam clawed for his sidearm, a look of fear on his face, and Nguyen did nothing at all to impede him. The big handgun pointed at the smaller man’s chest, shaky but unlikely to miss at such point-blank range. “And if I kill you, I can take the deal.”

  “Correct. You can.” Nguyen waited, impassive.

  MacAdam waited too, then got tired of it. “I don’t understand you. With your skills you could have tried for the gun, maybe taken it from me. Or you could have a gun trained on me instead.”

  “You ask me why? You are not a stupid man, Colonel. Knowing me as you do, why do you think I am standing here now?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t understand politicians like you. All I ever wanted to do was serve my country and the world.”

  Spooky shook his head. “That’s not all you want. You want to rise high. You want General’s insignia on your shoulders and all the prestige that comes with them. You want to be glorified as the hero of the first battle of the defense of Earth. But now a serpent has tempted you with a shortcut. She holds out the fruit of her favor. Will you take it?”

 
The shaking in MacAdam’s hand grew, until finally he placed the weapon flat on the table beside him. “Dammit…you’re half right. She also has my family. She says they’ll only be safe if I do as she told me.”

  “Ah. Your family.” Nguyen reached inside his jacket for an envelope. “Here are some photographs that may relieve your mind. Sorry about the quality, I had to use a low-density transmitter.”

  MacAdam looked at the printouts one by one, showing his wife and children smiling, holding the Sydney newspaper of the day after the launch, Colonel Alkina with a forced smile off to the side. The photos sagged into his lap as he put his head back against the chair and closed his eyes in defeat and relief. “All right,” he whispered. “Thank you. I’ll resign.”

  “Nonsense. I won’t let you shirk your duty so easily. You led your men into combat. They followed you, not me. You are the hero who stormed and captured the enemy ship. I forged the weapon, you wielded it with pride and honor.” Nguyen stepped forward to hold out his hand. “Well done, Colonel.”

  MacAdam stared at the hand for a moment, then took it with solemn wonder and gratitude.

  “Now get some sleep,” Nguyen ordered, “and keep my presence secret for now.” He left the Ops Center as spooky as he came in.

  -61-

  Master Helmsman Okuda stood at attention outside Captain Absen’s office door.

  Tobias looked at him curiously, but kept his mouth shut. It was a good trait in a bodyguard, keeping silence. Still, he wondered what was making the Congolese cue-ball nervous. From what he’d seen the man was calm and imperturbable, highly professional. Scuttlebutt said he was a hero, had saved the ship with his piloting. He shrugged within himself. There were many mysteries to what went on around any senior officer. Sometimes Security knew, sometimes they didn’t. He’d gotten used to it.

  “Send him in,” Tobias heard, and did that thing. The door shut behind Okuda. That was the Captain’s business as well, being alone with subordinates. He hated being even a second away from defending his principal, but he knew Absen was a fine hand with that .45 he kept within reach, so he just stayed relaxed. After all, the door wasn’t locked.