The Orion Plague

by David VanDyke

  Inside the office Absen looked Okuda up and down with a certain amount of surprise. “What can I do for you, Master Helm?” he asked the man. He was clearly uncomfortable.

  “Sir, I am reporting for discipline.”

  Absen sat back, running a hand over his thin crew cut. “For what?” He saw Okuda hesitate. “Come on, man. You saved the ship many times. Whatever it is, I think you have mitigating circumstances on your side.”

  “Yes, sir.” He took a deep breath. “I used your authorization to let deLille out of her quarters.”

  “Oh? Why? I’m not going to press any charges. Being kept out of the battle was punishment enough, I think.”

  “That’s just it, sir. She wasn’t kept out of the battle.”

  “Really?” Absen leaned forward, putting his elbows on his desk. “Tell me.”

  “I had her released before we closed with the enemy. I used your codes and recorded voice to tell the guards to escort her to the auxiliary bridge for duty, and return her to quarters afterward.”

  Absen cupped his chin in one palm. “Interesting. And you did this because you two are lovers?”

  Okuda’s jaw dropped for a moment. “You knew? No sir. I mean, yes we are, but that wasn’t why. It’s because she’s the best pilot this ship has.”

  “But not the best Helmsman.”

  Okuda blinked, nostrils flaring to a deep breath. “Perhaps not. But she worked with me the whole battle, picking up my slack when I was overloaded with tasks, so she fought too. And if the main bridge was destroyed, we needed the best we had to take over in the auxiliary CCC. I know she gets along well with Commander Huen.”

  “All right, you’ve informed me, thank you. Now go get some sleep; you’re about to fall over from fatigue.”

  “Captain…can you release her now?”

  “No, Chief, I think my leniency has been tested enough. Let her think about the error of her ways for a while. And next time you visit her, you can tell her well done, but I suggest she find another ship just as soon as she can. Perhaps Commander Huen will take her when they give him one.”

  “But Captain –”

  “Dismissed, Mister Okuda. Go. Mitigation does not always mean forgiveness.”

  “Yes, sir.” Snapping to attention, Okuda turned on his heel and exited Absen’s office, holding his sigh of relief until he was well into the corridor. That could have been much worse. Then he followed his captain’s orders and fell into his bunk, stopping only to relieve himself on the way.

  -62-

  “I love you,” Skull told Raphaela as they floated in the void together.

  “I know you do. That’s why I saved this piece of you.”

  “Piece of me?” His disembodied presence tried to look around, but found he could do nothing but hover, and perceive the woman he loved.

  “Yes. I’m talking with an engram your suit recorded on a data module. I’m sorry, Alan, but you’re gone.”

  “I remember…but I don’t feel gone. Can’t you keep me…like this?”

  “I can, and I will. But it’s only a piece of you, all I could save. You’re loaded into the nervous system of the Meme ship, as am I. This is just a virtual construct.”

  “Okay…so what now?”

  “I wanted to talk to you this way for a bit. To make sure you were sane.”

  He tried to shrug, but there was no result. “I feel sane.”

  “Do you remember when we were talking about Blending, and what it meant to share minds or bodies?”

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “Do you want to be a ship?”

  “What are my choices?”

  “This, or oblivion. I can’t countenance trying to load your memories into a human brain. Maybe someday, when we know more. But for now, you can be awake, and your mind can learn to run the ship – be the ship – or you can go to sleep, and I’ll wake you up later, when I figure something else out.”

  “I’ll be the ship.” He tried to smile, tried to reach for her, but could do nothing. “You knew, didn't you?”

  “Knew what?”

  “That this would happen.”

  Raphaela sighed. “I thought it might. You seemed bent on an heroic death. To expiate your guilt, I guess.”

  “You plan well for a girl in her twenties.”

  She laughed, painfully, ironically. “All it took was for you to die to make you finally believe I'm human?”

  Skull laughed flatly. “It was a joke. Sorry. I'm not myself lately.” He tried to do...anything, again, but failed. “What now?”

  “We’ll take it slow. Let’s start with a little scenery.” She began to manipulate the mental environment, and suddenly they seemed to be sitting in a room in the Meme ship. Skull acquired a ghostly body, a kind of transparent sketch instead of a real solid figure.

  “I figured out what you did,” he said once he got used to the situation. “Back when we started, on the way out, when all that…happened.”

  “Hmmm. What did I do?” She ran her hands over the walls, which began to rearrange themselves into more human contours.

  “It was your body. I thought it was the Eden Plague interfering with my nanos, the interaction unbalancing me, but it wasn’t, was it?”

  Raphaela folded her hands and sat down on a newly-extruded chair before it was really ready, gesturing at another. “Like most things, the answer is no, and yes.”

  “Explain that please.” Where once he would have been angry, now he was serene. Perhaps without biology, he had little emotional amplitude.

  “Meme communicate with biochemicals, but nothing so crude as hormones and pheromones. My human body has those, sure, and plenty of them, and don’t think I have complete control either because I don’t. What happened, rather, was my Meme physiology trying to communicate with your human one, that’s all.”

  “What was it trying to say?”

  She smiled with sad eyes. “Everything humans want to say to each other but often can’t. I love you, I despise you, I want you, I hate you, I need you – I am family. Did you know that in humans, the myriad colonies of bacteria that inhabit our bodies – skin, digestive system, even our tears – exchange populations through touch, especially intimate touch? When a husband and wife come together, they are literally growing together. Becoming one flesh, because a human isn’t human without all those little inhabitants. We’d die in short order without them; they do many vital jobs. Meme biology is just a bit more directed about the whole thing.”

  “So you weren’t trying to program me?”

  “Not at first. But once I had access to the Watcher Base, I did a little tinkering, just around the margins. It was more like, oh, baking cookies and rubbing your feet to put you in a good mood, than some kind of mind control. I wouldn’t do that. Love that’s not freely chosen has no value.” She got out of her chair to kneel next to his, to hold his ghostly hand. “Your will was always your own. It’s what made you Alan, and what made you Skull. I loved both of you.”

  He leaned to kiss her, a faint electric sizzle in their virtual world. “They love you too.”

  “And I have something to tell both of them.” She placed Skull’s transparent hand on her abdomen. “You’re going to be a father. Again.”

  “I’m all right with that.”

  They stayed that way for a time.

  “Tell me something else,” Skull said. “Why did the…did Raphael choose that name?”

  “Why not? He’d been called many things, depending on the role he played. He’d impersonated many gods to the primitive cultures.”

  Skull looked down at and through his hands. “Are you trying to say he really was God? Like…God God?”

  “Oh, you mean like Jehovah to the Hebrews? No, not at all. That would be…that would be a kind of blasphemy.”

  Skull snorted. “What? I thought you said neither of you believed in the supernatural.”

  “No, but we both believe in truth. To claim to be the creator of the universe would be…dishonest. Not
blasphemy against a deity, just against truth and morality.”

  “Raphael had no problem claiming to be Ra, or Zeus.”

  She shrugged. “All I can say is that was different to him. Claiming to be a greater being was no problem. He was a greater being after all, by access to technology, by superior knowledge, and by biological abilities. That’s the best I can explain it.”

  Skull relaxed perceptibly and Raphaela knew that the question had been important to him. Despite his lack of adherence to the Catholicism of his upbringing, somewhere deep down he believed in some kind of God. To be told it might be just a big Wizard of Oz act wasn’t likely to keep peace between them. If she had to shade the truth a bit…so be it.

  “So the Raphael thing…when did that start?” He looked at his hand, which was becoming more solid-looking by the second.

  “When he became old enough, and had consumed enough of his siblings, to become sentient. The Watchers had collected many ancient writings as part of their assignment. It appealed to him to be a guardian angel. Why, don’t you like it?”

  He smiled widely, a rarity. “I can’t think of any name more appropriate. But I believe from now on, I’ll call you Rae.”

  She smiled in return. “Rae Denham. I can get used to that.”

  A thoughtful look came over his face. “Denham. Heh. Seems moot now. You want to marry a ship?”

  “I want to marry a man, whatever body he inhabits. Children do better with parents that are married, regardless of your wishes or mine. Besides…let me just say that this ship has possibilities.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but…I’m all right with it, I guess. I’ll be your ship.” He was now fully solid, fully realized, looking just like his old self.

  “Oh, Alan,” she cried as she came into his arms. “I love you.”

  “Yeah,” he smiled, “I knew you’d say that.”

  -63-

  Two grueling days later filled with repairs, compromises and Intelligence analyses of the battle, Orion was under weigh for home. Along with the newly-christened Earth Space Navy Frigate Alan Denham – they even found a bottle of smuggled champagne to break on her prow by a spacesuited volunteer – they were pushed by the four modified Meme drones bio-welded to the back of the battleship. While relatively small compared to the enormous weight of Orion, the fusion engines of the fighter-sized biomachines imparted enough speed to take them back to Earth orbit in an estimated four weeks, leaving a week of air to spare. All Orion had to do was run a water feed and a control cable to the drones.

  Even that was a flexible estimate, as Raphaela, now obviously in control of the scout ship, informed Captain Absen that Denham could manufacture oxygen for breathing if necessary. After several days, the frigate had been recast on the inside into a ship that could be more or less run by humans. He let Raphaela do her work for two more days, until eventually it appeared she had the time to meet with him and his senior officers.

  They met in the Captain’s Mess, impeccably served by his Stewards, though the fare was mundane. Much of Absen’s personal stock had been destroyed by one of the many shocks to the ship. But dinner with the captain was a naval tradition. Talking ship’s business only after dinner was also a tradition, so the meal went quickly and soon Absen got to the real reason for the meeting.

  But first he loosened his collar to signal the change and said, “I just wanted to say again, on behalf of everyone here, how sorry we are about Denham and how proud we are of his heroism. I’ve spoken with the President and the Medal of Honor is the least we can do. I think a few dozen other countries are lining up similar awards.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I’m sure he will – would have – appreciated that.”

  Absen took another sip of water, wishing he had some port or sherry. “I need to know more about the alien ship. What went on, what’s our prisoners’ status – your reports have been brief and vague.”

  “I understand, Captain, and I thank you for the time you’ve given me to put Earth’s newest vessel in order. Starting with the ship: it will live.” She did not say anything about the Denham engram, which was slowly extending itself within its namesake. There was no telling how they would react to the oddity of a living ship with a formerly human mind.

  She went on, “It is relatively young as these things go, grown for the voyage, which lasted several hundred years and originated in a star system the location of which I have provided to the intelligence people. But you have no prisoners, Captain.”

  “What do you mean? We have the Meme.”

  “In human terms, you have sacks of meat. All that is Meme has escaped.”

  “Explain please.” Absen sipped at his water glass, making a face at its recycled taste.

  “Even more than humans, Meme are just a body that carries memories. In their case, their memories are encoded in complex molecules and can be moved, transferred. So what you have is the physical remains of three Meme after they detached their essences and crawled into a tiny ship, that then fired itself back the way it came, probably to rendezvous with whatever is coming. It's as if three people loaded their brains into a missile and sent themselves alive out into space.”

  “Thus the remaining protoplasm…and why there wasn’t more resistance. But I read the report: they were alive.”

  “They are alive, but have no mind. You make a good point, however. They will be very useful to us.”

  “For research?”

  “And more. I can induce them to divide and replicate. Each new blank Meme thus created could Blend with a human. Without Meme memories, the Blends would experience little in the way of mental stress, but could gain some abilities, not the least of which would be that they could help me genuinely crew this ship.”

  Absen nearly dropped his glass. “We are really in the realm of fantasy now, miss. You actually think I’m going to let you create a bunch of Meme and hand a weapon like that ship over to you?”

  “Captain,” her voice was exasperated. “I understand you not trusting me, but these new Blends would be the same people after the process as before. Think of it rather as infecting them with new abilities without changing their minds. In an Earth full of biotech and nanotech – and cyber-tech – what is this but just a leap forward? It’s using the enemy’s abilities against him, again.”

  “I won’t make that decision. I won’t authorize it, not unless the situation was dire. We have time. Don’t we?” Absen leaned forward. “We do have time?”

  “Unfortunately they wiped their main databanks before they left. These individuals were not warriors but they were also not entirely stupid. However, like all complex information systems, there is a lot of residual and backup that I am still working through.”

  “Cut to the chase, please,” Absen said mildly.

  “Nine years.”

  Everyone in the room let out a sigh of relief. “That’s…we have a chance.”

  “A chance, yes. Nine years…and then the Destroyer comes.”

  “A destroyer?” Absen’s eyes narrowed. “In our terms, that’s bigger than a frigate. So, one or two classes larger than this ship? That will be nasty.”

  Raphaela’s eyes grew bright, and she seemed to gain presence with the gravity of her expression. “No, Captain, not a destroyer, as in a very small cruiser. I found a reference to a ship they sent for as soon as they realized our technology included nuclear weapons. It’s a Destroyer like the Hindu god Shiva. As in, ‘I am become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.’ That kind of Destroyer.”

  “They mean to wipe us out.”

  Raphaela nodded grimly. “They always meant to wipe us out, ladies and gentlemen. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s by plague or asteroid or absorptive Blending or by fusion hellfire weapons. This is what Meme do. They are a predator species, except instead of merely eating their prey, they Blend with it, ‘improving’ both life forms. But unlike in me, if they do, all of your humanity will be erased.”

  Absen rubbed his face with h
is palms. “Nine years. Against…what? A death machine big enough to destroy a planet? How can we fight that?”

  “How did you fight the scout ship? Human cooperation leaped forward a hundred years in its natural development to build Orion. Human ingenuity and courage and sacrifice helped it win against a foe that should have beaten it hands-down. Have faith, Captain, and tell your crew to have faith. We have nine years.” She looked over at Jill Repeth, unconsciously placing her hand on her belly in a gesture familiar to mothers everywhere. “Let’s make them count.”

  Epilogue

  The trinity slept and dreamed in its tiny, crowded prison: Commander, Executive, Biologist, like three very intelligent rats in a very small cage. Had it not slept, they would have gone mad. There was nothing to do, no one to talk to except themselves, so it lived in worlds of the past, dwelling in the memories of their molecules.

  At two-thirds of lightspeed the probe coasted and occasionally pulsed with a radio beacon, announcing itself to the entity it had summoned when they first learned of the Watchers’ failure and the humans’ technological aspirations. When the time was right, the tiny vehicle would match velocities to be consumed by its gigantic cousin, and trinity would tell its tale of woe.

  When that happened, it knew it would be reborn. And better yet, it would be afforded a role in the inevitable conquest to come.

  End of The Orion Plague

  Continue for a preview of Cyborg Strike - Book 5 of the Plague Wars Series.

  Preview of Cyborg Strike

  Book 5 of the Plague Wars Series

  Repeth’s blast blew open the hatch and struck pillow blows against the two cybercommandos. Armor and sound cancellation reduced it to almost nothing. From the outside, though, it must have been quite a shock to those nearby.