“Children were ripped off the machines and trampled into the ground. We tried to stop them, but we were beaten down as well. Four of us died, four out of a ten-man team. Several of those who were torn from the machines died.”
“What happened to the people?” Esther asked, her voice hushed.
“They died. Or most of them did. A local police chief stormed the crowd and pulled us out, but our equipment was destroyed. We were extracted off the planet. From what the planetary government told us, more than 92% of the population of the town died, quarantined from the rest of the planet.”
“Quarantined? For heavy metal poisoning?” Bing asked.
“It wasn’t just the sick people who panicked, Bing. Everyone panics.”
All four of them sat lost in their thoughts for a moment. Esther knew why she was there now, but it was a mistake. Maybe Specialist Jeanmard had training in crowd control, but not Aylsworth and her. They were Marines, taught to kill the enemies of the Federation. They were not a police force.
The director should have requested an FCDC team. That was their bailiwick. But for whatever reason, he wanted Marines. Esther was pretty sure that he wanted one particular Marine, Captain Esther Lysander. As much as he was quirky, as much as he was personable, he was still a politician. No one reached the director level without being a politician. Even now, he was probably wondering how he could use her identity, even after the fact, to bolster his agency.
Esther didn’t think the director had any malfeasance in his intensions. She’d just met him, but she was sure he was a well-meaning and honorable man. But there were limited resources for the central government, and FAID would be competing with other agencies for those resources. He was simply trying to do what he could to better place the agency.
But he was wrong. Despite going through a tough situation in his earlier service, he didn’t seem to understand that there was a reason the Marines and the FCDC were different. They had different skill sets. And by thinking about the agency as a whole, he was making a mistake. It could jeopardize the mission if it all went to shit like his project on Manteo’s Grace.
Hopefully, it wouldn’t get to be anything like that. They were there to help the people, after all. And with all the resources available to them, they’d be able to chart the virus’ genome and start manufacturing vaccines within a couple of days.
But if it came to that, Esther planned on being ready for whatever was thrown at her.
FSNS BAY OF BENGAL
Chapter 31
“I’ve got to ask you, how old are you?” Esther asked Jim as they sat in the small lounge while waiting for the second seating in the mess.
She’d told herself she wasn’t going to ask, but only ten hours into their transit, she couldn’t hold back. The roll of his eyes told her he’d been asked that before, and he wasn’t too happy about it.
“I’m 23,” he said in a resigned voice.
“Twenty-freaking-three? How the hell are you a captain?”
“I graduated from Tori when I was 16,” he said.
“You? You graduated from Tori Institute of Technology when you were 16?”
TIT was one of the best-known—and hardest to gain entry—universities in the Federation. Graduates were actively recruited for extremely high-paying and prestigious jobs. And he graduated at an age when most people were still in Secondary.
“Yeah,” he said, as if it was nothing.
“Um . . . I don’t know what to say. But you went into the Marines?”
He shrugged and said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“OK, so assuming you got a waiver and came in at 17, that was six years ago. How are you a captain?”
“I did one year enlisted, then was offered a commission. And I just put on my railroad tracks four months ago.”
Esther furrowed her brows in thought. Something wasn’t right. Then she keyed on a what he’d just said, that he was “offered” a commission.
“Your commission, was that a foregone conclusion?”
He smiled and said, “You might say that.”
“And it had something to do with your studies?”
She didn’t need an answer. She saw it in his eyes.
“I’m not even going to ask,” she said. “And so, you haven’t really been in the fleet, have you?”
His eyes flashed in anger, and he blurted out, “Of course I have. I was with 3/9 as a PFC, and I did three years with 1/13 as a lieutenant.”
“One-thirteen? Were you on Gilead?” she asked.
First Battalion, Thirteenth Marines, had fought a very tough, six-month campaign on Gilead, suffering the most casualties of any unit since the Evolution.
“Yes, I was.”
“OK, you and I are going sit down so you can tell me about it sometime. I want to hear it from the ground truth. But you aren’t with a unit now, right?”
“I’m APOC.”
“Commandant or Chairman?”
“Commandant, currently detached to the Third Ministry.”
“And that has to do with your studies, I’m assuming. I’m APOC, too. Chairman.”
“Makes sense. You’ve fallen off the map,” he said.
“Oh, so you’re following where I’m at in the Corps.”
“Not really. You’re fairly well-known, and when I saw we were going to be in this together, I looked you up. Not that there’s been much of anything for almost two years.”
“Don’t I know it,” she said.
“Ah, our guests,” a Navy lieutenant said as he entered the wardroom and took a seat with him. “I trust the BB’s hospitality suits your needs? I’m Geral Kleinfelter, cargo officer for this fine ship.”
Esther didn’t know if he was joking or not about “this fine ship.” The Bay of Bengal had been a full ship-of-the-line when it was built over a hundred years ago, but it had long been transferred to the Federation’s maritime force. Most of the officers were Navy, but a good portion of the crew was contracted civilians. The ship looked to run well enough, but it was not a modern warship, and she was feeling her age.
“Esther Lysander,” she said, shaking his hand.
“Jim Aylsworth. And yes, everything’s fine, thanks.”
“It’ll be a short hop before we drop you and your charges off. That will be our first stop in a nine-month round-the-Federation.”
“Nine months? Long time to be away from home,” Jim said.
Geral shrugged, then said, “That’s the way it is with us.”
Esther didn’t think he was overly proud of his billet. She didn’t know much about the Maritime Service, but as a Naval officer, it probably didn’t hold the same prestige as being on a Navy ship-of-the-line. The Navy relied on the Maritime fleet to supply and maintain its ships, but she doubted too many Naval officers wanted to be assigned to them.
“Better than you guys, though. What, only two of you with all those FAID tree huggers? I’d go batshit having to babysit them.”
“What do you mean?” Jim asked.
Esther knew that many in the military had a low regard for the civilians in the government as a whole, and Third Ministry in particular. And that held true for FAID as well. She’d heard them called “Fucking A” on more than a few occasions. Winning the hearts and minds didn’t always jive with how Marines viewed life, but as General Simone had said to her once, every job FAID created for someone meant one less terrorist, one less enemy the Marines had to fight.
“What do I mean? You know what I mean. They’re fucking peace-aholics, no guts to them.”
Kristian Dymond had some guts on Copia 2, Esther thought. He’d reacted quickly when Esther had made her move on Copia 2, even if Tokiyashi-Jules hadn’t.
“They go to into some pretty hairy situations, and without arms to defend themselves,” Jim said, a little bit of steel in his voice.
“Well, maybe. But that’s because they think everything’s kumbaya, and you can do anything if you just love the enemy to death. They’re too stup
id to know when there’s danger, and they’re a big waste of the taxes I pay. And speaking of the devil,” he continued nodding towards Doctors Bao and Humbert, who’d just poked their heads in the hatch.
“Is this where we’re supposed to eat?” Bing asked.
“Yes, yes, yes, come on in,” Geral said as if he hadn’t just been disparaging the entire FAID. “We’ve still got another six or seven minutes, but come take a seat here.”
Esther didn’t like duplicity, and so the good Lieutenant Kleinfelter did not impress her. Luckily, they wouldn’t be on the ship long. She looked over to Jim, and if Kleinfelter had caught the glare the young captain was giving him, he would have pissed his pants in fear.
It seemed as if her fellow Marine had a bit of vinegar in him.
LORTON-DELOS AD
Chapter 32
“And here we are,” Heidi Boonprasong said as the bright purple Open Arms hover pulled into the compound.
Esther, in the back seat, was not happy at what she saw. The compound looked to consist of two new Farrell-Lee expeditionary buildings with another still in its crate, waiting to be erected. A ring of simple chain-link fencing, top with memory wire encircled the area. Memory wire was an adequate tool to use in crowd management, but it was on top of chain link that could be cut with a simple set of snippers. If someone wanted to break in, they’d just cut the fence and enter under the wire.
Not that anyone had to break in. The front gate was wide open, and as she watched, a man, woman, and child walked through. Standing in a loose line, another 40 or 50 people stood waiting in front of one of the buildings. Some had on surgical masks, some had on more elaborate mechanical masks, and some had on full environmental suits. More than half, however, were without any sort of protection.
What hit Esther hardest, though, was that five or six were lying flat on the ground, a couple with someone tending them, but three seem to have an invisible boundary surrounding them, keeping the rest of the people a couple of meters away from them. One of them was a little girl, a bright sky-blue blouse making her stand out. An older woman sat beside her, the girl’s hand in hers.
“This isn’t going to do, Mz. Boonprasong,” Bing said from the front seat. “I thought Open Arms was more professional.”
At least he sees the security problem.
“We try, Dr. Bao,” Heidi told him. “But I’m a logistics specialist. Our whole team is. We were tasked with erecting the Farrell-Lees, powering them up, and putting up the fence. The people, they just started showing up hours ago.”
Open Arms was an NGO based out of the Brotherhood. Heidi and her team were out of Trek 4, a Federation hub in the sector. Esther was only vaguely aware of the work Open Arms did. She’d been surprised, though, that it was the NGO who had met them at the shuttle port, got them through the quarantine checkpoint, and transported them to this compound. They should have been met by the government, not an NGO.
“We’ve got people lying in the dirt, for God’s sake, people who need treatment. Most of those others are just standing there right next to each other, including those who are pretty obviously infected. We need to rectify this at once.”
It took Esther a moment to realize that Bing was not complaining about security, but rather the condition of the patients.
Oh, real classy, Lysander. They aren’t the enemy—the virus is. Get your head in the game.
“Hoods on,” Bing said as the hover pulled up.
The team was already in their PPE’s, the Personal Protective Equipment, but without the hoods attached. The hover had positive pressure, and it had been scanned, so it was a safe environment. Out there, though, that was where the virus roamed. Esther immediately pulled the hood over her head and activated the seal. A few moments later, the PPE, having done its integrity test, lit up the small green LED that let her and everyone else know that she was protected. A red flashing light—well, she just hoped she never saw that.
“Unsealing,” the driver, whose name Esther never caught, said.
With a whoosh of air, the overpressure rushed out, and Esther opened her door, stepping out. She turned to watch four more passenger hovers and two trucks pull in. One by one, the hovers’ doors opened, and the ten medical personnel, six security, and Jim stepped out.
Dr. Gene Humbert, Bing’s second in command, immediately went to the trucks, and like a traffic cop in the old flicks, started guiding them to the building for offload while Dr. Veta Ericsson took three of the nurses to start triaging the patients.
Esther felt a little useless. She didn’t have a job at the moment, and she didn’t know where she could contribute. She’d never seen a Farrell-Lee actually being erected, so she wandered over to the Open Arms team, who were just starting on the third building. The foreman, or who Esther assumed was the foreman, was just finishing laying out the pad with the forms. Two men stood by with the foamcrete dispensers, and when given the signal, started on the far side of the pad, spraying a thin layer of white liquid which almost immediately started foaming up, rising ten or twelve centimeters. As the two men started walking back, Esther strode up alongside the near edge of the form until she reached them. Kneeling, she put her head down to the level of the foamcrete, marveling how smooth and level it was. Each new swath laid down by the workers rose to the level of the already applied section and melded together without a visible seam.
“Go ahead, step on it,” the foreman told her.
“Really? Doesn’t it have to set?”
“It’s set. Takes about ten seconds,” he said, then demonstrated it by stepping up on it.
Esther stepped on it as well. It felt perfectly smooth under her feet—and strong.
“What happens if I’m standing there and they foamcrete me?”
The foreman laughed and said, “No, it’s safe to use—it’s got safety nanos. Can’t stick to humans. Oh, it’ll trap you in place, sure enough. Most everybody’s been ‘shackled,’ as we call it, at least once. You owe the rest of the crew a round if you let that happen.”
“I’d better watch myself then. I don’t need to be buying drinks for everyone,” she said. “That looks pretty hard. If that was around my feet, I don’t think I could pull free.”
“Never in a million years. Nah, if that happens, we either got to get the jackhammer or the cat.”
“The cat?”
“Oh, sorry. The catalyst. That breaks down all of this when we leave. The ground will be a flattened, but no trace of the pad will remain. Part of the requirements for temps. We’ve got to take everything with us when we leave.”
That made sense to her, but it seemed amazing that all of what looked to be a huge pad of regular plasticrete could simply disappear. What seemed even more amazing is that the two men finished the pad from one, fairly small tank of the foamcrete liquid. Ten minutes after Esther walked up, the pad was ready, and the installation of the Farrell-Lee could commence.
She watched with interest as the five crates were horsed into position. Most of the erection was automatic, but the initial placement was done with old-fashioned brute strength. She stepped in to help, happy to be doing something. Eric—the foreman—checked the positions, then initiated the erection. Esther was looking forward to watching the expeditionary building take shape when Bing walked up to her.
He pulled her aside and quietly said, “Esther, I know this isn’t part of your job description. But the entrance, there is simply no excuse for that, and I don’t care what Mz. Boonprasong says. There are codes for what we do. I’ve got the requirements here.” He pulled up his PA, which Esther dutifully tapped. “If you can take Michelle and her team, and any of the Open Arms folks you can shanghai, can you honcho building the screening and decon station? No one is to enter or leave the compound without going through protocol. If you can get this up to step 18, then you can ask Gene to install the units. Once it’s done, we need it manned around the clock.”
Bing was right. This wasn’t part of her job description. And from talking to Miche
lle, it wasn’t part of hers, either. The security specialist could man this station Bing wanted with her team, but she wasn’t a construction engineer.
But then again, there was nothing in an infantry officer’s job about fighting some sort off megavirus, and as Bing had said, the plans were now on her PA. And if FAID was anything like the Marine Corps, she was sure they’d be so explicit as to leave nothing to individual choice.
Most of all, it had to be done. The medical staff had their hands full, and if neither the government nor Open Arms had gotten around to it, someone had to pick up the slack. That someone might as well be her.
Well, she could honcho it. Eric might be able to spare a body, and maybe it was time to get Jim’s TIT-educated brain involved. No matter how complicated the plans, he should be able to decipher them—that or turn in his diploma.
***************
It took almost eight hours, five hours longer than allowed by FAID Instruction 1002.2.1, Secure Access and Egress in a Contaminated Environment. It wasn’t that the instructions were that difficult. They were really straight-forward. But most of them didn’t understand how to actually do what was being directed.
“Install a Class 2 entrance frame two (2) meters from the display station. Ensure frame is grounded and can withstand 15 N of lateral force at 1.3 meters.”
Esther, Jim, and Michelle knew what each of the words meant, and they knew that the intent was to make sure the frame holding the scanners would be sturdy enough to do the job. But none of them were sure how to accomplish any of those individual steps. Eric lent them one of his construction techs, and with continual referencing to the net, they managed to construct the gate station. Dr. Humbert brought over the scanners, display and decon equipment, and finally, they were up and running. Another 50 or 60 people had entered the compound in the meantime, but with the station functioning, Esther closed off the gaps to the side with memory wire.
For all the difficulty of constructing the station, it was almost foolproof to run. People wanting to enter the compound stepped through the scanner, which searched for the virus along with a host of other conditions that would exacerbate the effects of the virus. Those found to be clear were given a warning that they were entering a contaminated area and given the chance to leave. If they insisted on entering, which was usually because they were accompanying someone who had the virus, they were given the wrap-around breathing mask.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 92
