Old Ironsides

by Dean Crawford

  Nathan sat alongside Foxx and stared at the Marines’ unusual combat suits, made of some kind of fleshy metal.

  ‘It’s nano-carbon, a form of graphene,’ Foxx said as she noted his gaze. ‘It’s a metal that’s also a fabric, so it can absorb huge impacts without damaging the wearer’s body. They brace them vertically as well, so that Marines can jump from great heights and land safely in a way that would break a normal person’s bones.’

  ‘Isn’t that bio-enhancement though?’ he asked. ‘It’s against the law, right?’

  ‘Not if it’s not the body that’s being directly enhanced,’ Foxx pointed out. ‘It’s a suit, remember? All Marines have optical implants though, to share real-time data with command and control and their fellow troops.’

  Sergeant Agry went on, his voice hoarse from what Nathan imagined was years of screaming on a parade ground somewhere.

  ‘We’ve done this before a hundred times. Speed, precision, unity and never, ever let yourself go anywhere alone. We don’t know what the hell’s aboard that thing so we secure our position fast, understood?!’

  The Marines thumped their rifle butts once more on the deck in support of their sergeant as he strapped into the seat closest to the rear ramp.

  ‘Deployment in sixty seconds.’

  The pilot’s calm voice filled the troop compartment as Sergeant Agry called out.

  ‘All arms!’

  Nathan heard the soldiers’ plasma rifles hum into life as they were activated, each soldier checking his neighbour’s mask for gaps and ensuring a sufficient supply in the slim oxygen tanks carried upon their backs. Satisfied, they sat in silence and waited for the ramp to drop.

  Nathan heard the sound of the engine exhausts change as the pilot altered his power settings to land the craft in a bay he had selected. Schematics obtained from Titan’s logs had provided a plan of the huge ship for the pilots and the Marines to follow, and Nathan had quickly realized just how vast the colony ship was. The pilot’s voice broke the silence.

  ‘Deck Alpha, landing now!’

  The Marines tensed up as one, hands ready to punch their harnesses free as the others held rifles aimed at the ramp. Nathan gripped his seat as the shuttle’s landing struts slammed down onto the deck and with a hiss of vapor the ramp dropped and the pressurised atmosphere within the shuttle rushed out with the Marines in close pursuit.

  Nathan and Foxx climbed out of their seats, Foxx holding her pistol in one hand as they advanced slowly down the ramp.

  The Marines thundered onto the darkened deck of a small landing bay, the flashlights on their rifles slicing into the gloom. Nathan could see that the deck was frosted with ice that glistened like diamond chips. The Marines formed two semi-circles that faced outward with bristling lines of rifles barrels that created one giant arc of firepower pointed out into the darkness.

  Nathan and Foxx crouched down as the shuttle’s engines flared with silent white light behind them and it lifted off and pulled out of the bay, ready to return when the soldiers required an extraction. Nathan watched as the landing bay doors silently lowered and sealed themselves as the shuttle waited for the ship’s massive outer doors to open, and suddenly they were totally alone aboard the massive ship.

  Sergeant Agry looked over his shoulder at his Marines and pointed ahead. Four soldiers advanced forward, covered by their colleagues. Nathan watched as Agry led his men to a bunker nearby, which was where he assumed the controls for the landing bay doors would be. They descended into the darkness and for a few moments there was nothing but silence. Then a series of glowing lights flickered on in the bunker, visible through the observation windows.

  Moments later, Agry’s voice crackled across the bay.

  ‘Secure the perimeter!’

  Moments later the lighting in the bay flickered into life and illuminated an empty structure with no vessels inside. Nathan watched as the Marines emerged from the bunker.

  ‘Nobody about,’ he said to Foxx. ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘Me either,’ Foxx admitted. ‘No signs of life means the crew are either gone or already dead.’

  Sergeant Agry, his rifle held at port-arms, gestured to his men.

  ‘Spread out, cover all points and exits and hold the landing bay no matter what. Vaughn, Alex, with me.’ Agry pointed at Nathan and Foxx. ‘You two, with us and keep up! Let’s move!’

  Nathan felt briefly as though he was back in the Army as he hurried after the Marines.

  They headed for hatches that led into the ship’s interior, all of which were sealed.

  ‘Delta on me,’ Agry ordered. ‘Any signs of life from the ship?’

  ‘Nothing,’ a Marine corporal replied, his twin chevrons easily visible to Nathan on his shoulder armor. ‘The ship’s dead.’

  Nathan walked alongside Foxx. ‘You think the plague’s already taken them all out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered back, ‘but I don’t think we should be the first to go through those doors.’

  A voice barked directly into Nathan’s ear. ‘Neither do I!’

  Nathan yelped and jumped up as he saw Doctor Schmidt’s ephemeral blue form glowing right next to him.

  ‘Damnit, you do that again and I’ll pull your plug!’

  Sergeant Agry’s voice cut in. ‘You, doc’, get over here.’

  Schmidt grinned to himself as he glided over to the sergeant.

  ‘You wanna head through that door and see what’s happening?’ Agry suggested.

  ‘I’d be delighted,’ Schmidt replied cheerily, and then he flickered out and vanished.

  ‘I hate that man, or whatever he is,’ Nathan whispered.

  Moments later, Schmidt reappeared. ‘The corridor is clear, sergeant,’ he informed Agry. ‘The doors have been sealed manually from the far side so you’ll have to cut through them. There are no Aleeyans present and no signs of life. Do you want me to check the bridge?’

  ‘Go for your life,’ Agry replied and then his wide jaw creased in a cynical grin. ‘Bit late for that now though, right?’

  Nathan blurted a laugh as Schmidt’s smug expression faltered a little but quickly recovered.

  ‘Never say never, sergeant,’ the doctor replied, and then vanished again.

  Nathan watched as two Marines worked efficiently to set plasma charges against the hatch’s hinges, designed to burn through rather than blast off. The two soldiers hurried away and moments later the charges flared brightly with a fearsome blue-white light, drops of liquid metal spilling onto the deck.

  ‘Rams, go!’ Agry snapped.

  Two Marines hefted a solid cylinder of metal between them, and with a dull boom that echoed around the landing bay the ram crashed into the smoldering door and it broke free of its mountings and slammed into the interior wall as the Marines rushed in with their rifles pointed ahead of them. Their flashlights scanned the darkness like laser beams but Nathan could see nothing moving except the faint haze of moisture and ice clinging to the walls.

  ‘Let’s go.’

  The Marines edged forward, moving from cover to cover. Nathan figured that they must be following schematics in their optical implants to guide them, so swift was their motion through the ship, and for the first time he found himself hankering after a similar implant. The Marines turned left at the end of the corridor, moving at a fast jog and covering all points as they advanced.

  Nathan and Foxx followed the troops as they advanced without incident and reached the bridge deck, Sergeant Agry maintaining the lead as he opened the hatches and stepped out onto the deck.

  Hexagonal in shape and as dark as the rest of the ship, the bridge deck was dominated by two massive hatches that were sealed, much like those on Titan. Agry crept forward as his men silently fanned out and formed a defensive ring, alternating men aiming inward toward the bridge doors and outward toward various access points as Nathan and Foxx crouched again and waited.

  Agry placed a charge on the bridge doors, set the timer and then activated it befo
re retreating to crouch alongside Nathan. The charge flared and burned with ferocious intensity as it seared through the doors’ locking mechanism, illuminating the deck with a flickering, ghostly white light. Moments later, the locking mechanism dropped off the doors and clattered to the deck.

  The Marines made to advance toward the doors, but then through the shimmering sparks and smoke from the charges emerged Doctor Schmidt’s ghostly blue form. The jovial smile was gone, his eyes haunted as he held up one hand to halt the soldiers.

  ‘Sergeant, you may wish to don protective filters on your masks before you enter the bridge.’

  Agry and the Marines instantly grabbed filters from their kit and attached them over their masks. A medic handed spare sets to Nathan and Foxx and they fitted them quickly. Sergeant Agry raised three fingers, then two, then one and then with a combined effort the Marines slammed into the doors and they crashed open.

  The Marines rushed onto the bridge, their rifles sweeping for any sign of a target.

  The bridge was dark, the instrument panels silent and the main viewing panel black and featureless. The Marine’s flashlights illuminated a series of control panels frosted with ice crystals as Nathan moved forward and saw what looked like hair upon one of the panels.

  Then he saw more forms slumped around the bridge and his stomach convulsed as he realized what he was looking at and why the bridge had been sealed.

  The crew of the vessel were all at their stations, but their bodies were no longer intact or in some cases even recognizable as human. Limbs were strewn across the desk, torsos and heads all disconnected and in disarray.

  The Marines supporting him moved into view, each of their flashlights illuminating the gruesome corpses before them, and then they too stopped moving.

  Nathan took a cautious step forward, unable to tear his gaze from the sight before him despite the horror that ran cold through his veins. The lights from the Marine’s weapons illuminated the face of Captain Dwight, his disfigured features twisted in agony, his mouth agape as though screaming. His hair was in disarray, long and snaking as it lay in a tangled stream as it had fallen out during his death throes. One eye socket gaped black and empty, the eyeball nearby looking as though it had melted across the deck.

  Nathan felt his guts turn to slime as though he was already infected. ‘This is what the plague did to people?’ he gasped.

  ‘No,’ Foxx replied. ‘This is something new.’

  Sergeant Agry looked up at Doctor Schmidt. ‘How many are there?’

  ‘I can discern perhaps twenty bodies here on the bridge,’ Schmidt replied, ‘but there were over a thousand people aboard this ship when she left dock. I can only assume that they too are dead and that the crew locked themselves in here in an attempt to avoid contamination. That means that either they were already infected and didn’t know it, or the infection was able to pass into a sealed bridge.’

  Nathan looked at the solid walls of the bridge and the steel doors the Marines had breached in order to gain access, and then slowly his eyes turned upward to grill vents arrayed around the walls of the bridge.

  ‘Air conditioning,’ he said out loud. ‘The ship must have environmental controls.’

  Foxx shook her head.

  ‘The plague was never able to spread through the air,’ she said. ‘There must have been an infected person in here with the rest of the crew.’

  ‘Then they would also have been isolated once they started showing symptoms,’ Agry pointed out. ‘The crew can’t have known that they were also infected, else they wouldn’t have locked themselves in here.’

  Nathan felt his blood running cold in his veins as his imagination began to run wild.

  ‘What if they were no longer immune to the plague?’ he asked. ‘What if they somehow came into contact with it and were infected?’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Doctor Schmidt said. ‘The vaccine for the plague has been working for centuries. No human being has been infected in over two hundred years and…’

  Nathan turned as he saw Foxx turn to look at him. Behind her mask, her face was white and beads of sweat were pouring down her face, her hair wet and clamped to her forehead.

  ‘Foxx?’ Nathan asked, instinctively reaching out for her.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she asked, and then she slumped to the deck alongside Nathan.

  ***

  XXXI

  ‘Get her into isolation!’

  The Marines moved fast, carrying Foxx out of the bridge as Nathan moved to follow.

  ‘Not you!’ Sergeant Agry snapped and grabbed his arm. ‘We need you here.’

  ‘She’s sick!’ Nathan growled back and shook off the sergeant’s grip. ‘This whole ship is infected and she’s caught it.’

  ‘But nobody else has,’ Schmidt interjected thoughtfully, watching as Foxx was lifted onto a stretcher and hurried away by the Marines. ‘The Marines were first aboard and yet Foxx has been afflicted, which would suggest that there is something different about her.’

  Nathan thought for a moment and then he got it.

  ‘That drug she was sprayed with, Shiver?’ he said. ‘She said it took her memory, put her in a hospital for a couple of days.’

  Doctor Schmidt looked around them at the bodies strewn across the bridge, and Nathan could almost see the doctor’s digital mind working as he spoke.

  ‘The drug caused a form of short-term amnesia,’ he recalled. ‘Lieutenant Foxx could not even remember who she was and it took twenty four hours for her memories to return, which they eventually did, fully intact.’

  Nathan looked at the corpses, and his detective’s mind finally began to work properly again as he grappled with the problem.

  ‘What if the drug wasn’t about erasing the memory of a cop?’ he suggested. ‘What if the memory loss was just a by-product, a side effect of something else?’

  ‘Such as what?’ Sergeant Agry asked. ‘And what does all of this have to do with a street drug?’

  Nathan walked to the captain’s chair, careful to step over the bodies littering the deck around it.

  ‘Foxx was sprayed with the drug and she lost her memory. Is it possible, however far-fetched, that her brain could have forgotten how to fight infection by the plague?’

  Doctor Schmidt stared at Nathan in apparent amazement. His features ceased to move for several seconds and he pored over data streams that Nathan imagined were rushing through his data banks.

  ‘It is not impossible,’ he conceded. ‘Ultimately, the immune system is controlled by the brain. With enough study, it is possible to reverse an immunity to any given infection, but that ignores the possibility that this plague is something new, an evolutionary adaption to which we have no natural immunity.’

  Nathan shook his head.

  ‘Foxx went down within minutes of entering the ship,’ he said. ‘Did the plague ever strike that fast?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Schmidt replied. ‘If the person’s immune system was already compromised and…’

  Schmidt suddenly fell silent and stared directly at Nathan, and Nathan knew that the doctor had hit on something entirely new.

  ‘Intrinsic immunity,’ the doctor whispered. ‘That’s how they could have reversed her immunity, made her vulnerable to the plague again. They could have done this to the entire ship.’

  ‘What’s intrinsic immunity?’ Agry asked.

  ‘A defense mechanism discovered in the twenty first century and upon which the human vaccine to the plague was later created,’ Schmidt explained. ‘It’s a cellular based anti-viral mechanism, genetically encoded proteins which target eukaryotic retroviruses. Unlike adaptive and innate immunity effectors, intrinsic immune proteins are usually expressed at a constant level, allowing a viral infection to be halted quickly.’

  ‘In English, Einstein,’ Nathan said.

  ‘And make it fast,’ Agry added, ‘I don’t like being aboard this floating coffin.’

  ‘Eukaryotic organisms have been exposed to viral infect
ions for millions of years,’ Schmidt explained. ‘Some viruses have proven to be so deadly that specific, genetically encoded cellular defense mechanisms have evolved to combat them. Intrinsic immunity comprises cellular proteins which are always active and have evolved to block infection.’

  ‘Sounds great,’ Nathan replied. ‘So what’s going wrong with Foxx?’

  ‘The problem with intrinsic immune proteins is that they’re very specific in their mechanism,’ Schmidt explained. ‘They do not respond differently upon repeat infection by the same pathogen. Intrinsic immunity is always there, ready to shut down infection quickly, whereas other forms of immunity must detect the infection and then slowly become active – it’s why you’ll first get sick from an infection like a cold before your body can fight it off again. Because the body’s production of intrinsic immune proteins cannot be increased during infection, these defenses can become saturated and ineffective if a cell is infected with a high level of virus.’

  Nathan took a moment to digest what the doctor was getting at.

  ‘So if somebody were able to make a person immuno-deficient for a short time and then overload them with a virus, they’d fall sick.’

  ‘Yes,’ Schmidt agreed. ‘If Foxx was exposed to a concoction that briefly shut down her immune response via affecting her neural networks, causing the temporary loss of memory as a side effect, then she would for a time be vulnerable to infection from any virus. The process is likely based on opti-genetics, a process of reversing the brain’s central core and effectively arresting cognition and awareness. The process is effective but it is not one way – that is, immunity can be removed but it can also be returned. Foxx might not be lost to us yet.’

  Nathan looked about the bridge, a sense of urgency swelling within him.

  ‘Sergeant, get your men off this ship.’

  ‘The vessel isn’t secure,’ Agry pointed out, ‘and you’re not here to give me orders.’