The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War)

by L. L. Richman

  All three substances had one thing in common: they’d been jokingly mentioned in a conversation she’d had three weeks earlier with the Center’s lead programmer, Leah Harris.

  The woman had shared with Sam her guilty pleasure: watching feeds from old pre-diaspora productions that imagined what life would be like hundreds of years in their future.

  “It’s crazy, some of the stuff they envisioned,” Leah had told Sam. “To make their stories more believable, they’d fabricate these wild discoveries. Unobtanium, they called it. And then they used handwavium to explain away the things we take for granted today, like wire communication and Starshot buoys.”

  Sam had laughed with her at the odd, made-up words and their obvious meanings. She’d laughed even harder at the names of some of the materials Leah had mentioned. Some had been ridiculously fake, but others like thyrium and adamantium had an aura of believability about them.

  Seeing the fictional materials listed here meant Leah was involved somehow. Sam could think of no good reason for the programmer to purposely mislabel valuable test material, unless she’d been dragged into the situation against her will and had used the labels as a last-ditch effort to send a cryptic message.

  “Doctor?” the scientist beside her prodded.

  “Sorry. It’s a… new nomenclature we’ve been discussing in the labs,” she said, grasping at the first excuse that came to mind. “I hadn’t realized we’d begun using it already. Here, let me fix that for you.”

  She turned back to the holo and reached for the molecular structure on display. She took her time, rotating it slowly as her gaze roamed the rest of the workstation. Her attention was caught by an icon that showed network connectivity. His access wasn’t limited like her own.

  She casually moved her other hand against the workstation’s console, ensuring the tattoo made contact with its surface.

  While the app did its thing, downloading itself and working its way into the base’s system, Sam identified the chiral material as one of the L2 samples. She erased ‘adamantium,’ replacing it with the molecular chain’s actual name, and then stepped back with a smile.

  “I’ve reverted it back to its non-chiral label for you. That’ll be less distracting, I think.”

  The scientist, who she now suspected was no real scientist, nodded his thanks.

  Sam motioned to the woman standing in front of the other workstation. “Do you think Doctor Demuth would mind if I did the same for her?”

  The man bobbed his head. “Here, let us go over there, and I will explain. She is a private person and does not like strangers to interrupt her.”

  Sam let him lead, trailing behind and waiting patiently as the woman listened to Gish’s explanation, staring at Sam with suspicion all the while.

  The woman pursed her lips, nodded abruptly, and then stepped back.

  “Doctor?” Gish gestured to the station, and Sam stepped forward.

  She wasted no time. With one hand, she manipulated the contents on the screen, while she pressed the other against the console, giving the Faraday tattoo the opportunity to send out more of its digital phone-home troops.

  She was relieved to see that this vial also came from an L2 lab, and even more relieved to have caught Leah’s mislabeling before it raised any attention.

  Calling up the vial’s label, she erased its ‘naquadah’ designation and replaced it with the actual molecular description.

  “That should do it,” she said, stepping back.

  Demuth looked as if she’d eaten something sour, but she at least thanked Sam before practically pushing her out of the way in her haste to regain control over the workstation.

  Sam nodded pleasantly to Gish. Then, instead of returning directly to her own station, she detoured to the table that held the 3D printer and RNA replicon unit. Under pretense of examining the equipment more closely, she took care that her tattoo made solid contact with each machine.

  She’d just finished and was looking around the room for other equipment that might have network access, when sudden movement at the lab’s doors caught her attention.

  Marceau was approaching, and he did not look happy.

  SLEIGHT OF HAND

  Akkadian base

  An-Yang Dust Belt

  Proxima Centauri

  Che watched from his office inside the asteroid’s Combat Information Center as the tau-neu stasis pods containing the three additional Alliance scientists were placed inside ‘Rosen Base’. A medical corpsman would arrive shortly to release the three from stasis and escort them to another lab in the faux research facility. There, they would be given the same vial Travis had been assigned and ordered to weaponize it.

  It had been Bijin’s idea to acquire scientists from various disciplines and assign them the same problem. His reasoning was that different points of view combined with different skill sets might provide Akkadia with an arsenal of bioweapons. Working as a team, they would land on only one.

  Che privately thought that one surgical strike, precisely delivered from an exceptional weapon, was preferable to relying on less potent ordnance. Yet the citizen doctor was the medical scientist, not Che, so he deferred to Bijin’s recommendation.

  Fortunately, the abandoned drug facility had plenty of clean lab rooms. They were grouped in such a way that the fictional base could be contained to a relatively small area.

  Throughout the rest of the station, Che’s soldiers could move freely without the need for pretense. It was bracingly, unashamedly Akkadian.

  Che swiped away from the tau-neu pods, cycling his way through the various feeds that showed the goings-on around the asteroid. He knew the CIC staff just outside his doors were maintaining each feed under close scrutiny, but it gave him a measure of satisfaction to occasionally see for himself that all was well.

  He paused as he came to the one that showed Dr. Bijin bent over a piece of equipment. Behind the man and across the hall, Che could just make out a row of sealed rooms.

  Shadowed figures moved within two of them—political prisoners whose deaths had been commuted so that they might serve the empire in a more useful manner. They would become the bioweapon’s first test subjects.

  Che continued flipping through the feeds until a chime announced he had a visitor.

  “Come,” he called, and the doors slid open to reveal Citizen Commander Li, the officer of the watch.

  “Sir, we have news from Procyon,” the man said with a small bow. “The properties manager has been located. The team is en route to her ship as we speak, and the fourth vial should be in their hands before the end of the day.”

  “Very good,” Che said. “Thank you, Citizen Commander.”

  Li bowed himself out, but before the doors fully closed, Marceau appeared.

  “Do you have news for me as well?” the general asked.

  Marceau nodded. “I just came from Intelligence. They maintain that the Alliance would not expect us to use a bioweapon so soon after its acquisition.” He grimaced. “They tell me our friends in Procyon will assume that we are going to be spending several weeks breaking it down and studying it before we do anything with it.”

  “This appears to be good news,” Che said. “So tell me, why do you not look pleased?”

  Marceau lifted a hand. "Despite what they have done to sow disinformation about potential uses and targets, it would seem the Alliance has ordered an increased level of security around the institute.”

  “Have you a solution to this problem?”

  Marceau nodded, then motioned to Che’s holoscreen. “May I?”

  “By all means.” Che similarly gestured to the screen, sending Marceau the token to control it.

  After a moment’s pause, the base’s feed was replaced by an image of the institute. “Three of our team are inserted into either the institute itself, or the service organizations that have access to it during large events.” The image was replaced by the logos of a cleaning and maintenance company and a caterer.

  “Ou
r initial plan had been for these agents to plant the canisters containing the virus in the lifts that would carry the delegates to the ballroom, or along the hallway that led into it.” Marceau shifted. “It was deemed too risky to try to plant anything within the ballroom itself, given the number of secret service agents from the various nations that will be on site in the room.”

  Che nodded and motioned for Marceau to continue.

  The colonel frowned. “Of course, even those routes are likely to be found, now that the Alliance has increased its security.”

  “I take it there is an end to this, and it is a satisfactory one?” Che asked, letting a small acerbic edge leach into his voice.

  “My apologies, Citizen General,” the other man said smoothly with a small dip of his head. He indicated the holo once more, and the view changed.

  It was as if a drone had backed away from the building, and then plunged beneath the city’s streets. Che found himself staring at meters of ceramacrete and durasteel as they whizzed by. They were now in a tunnel that ran parallel to the institute.

  “There is a warren of maintenance tunnels beneath the streets of Midland, and one of them runs reasonably close to the Merki Institute,” Marceau said. “It is far enough away that those policing the building have dismissed it, assuming no one would go to the trouble it would require to access the institute by this means.”

  “You, however, disagree?”

  “Indeed. I already have the teams working on threading nanofilament channels through the ceramacrete,” Marceau told him.

  He pointed to the holo, and a highlight encircled an access door built into the side of the tunnel.

  “Every few meters, such an access panel exists. Behind it run sewage, water treatment, and other lines. When we first inserted into the habitat, I ordered the team to hollow out an area behind the panel nearest to Merki while they were planting bug-out bags throughout the city.”

  “Ahhhh,” Che breathed his understanding.

  Bug-out bags were standard protocol for every team when they inserted into a new location. The caches stored fake ID tokens, stolen credit chits, and spare weapons in case a cover was blown during a mission.

  “And one of the cache locations will serve as the insertion point for the virus, I take it?” he prompted.

  “Yes, it will.” Marceau nodded to the access panel. “They have been steadily feeding formation material into the Merki panel, and the nanobots are working to weave the channels that lead to the building. They have already breached the building’s foundation.”

  “How do you plan to reach the ballroom where the summit is being held?” Che asked. “It is not on the ground floor.”

  Marceau smiled. “We go up through the walls. By this time tomorrow, we will have channels spaced at regular intervals along the ballroom’s perimeter.”

  As he spoke, the holo’s image altered to show the room in question. Small dots began to light up along the edges of the venue.

  “With a single command, the builder bots will chew through the intervening five-millimeter substrate in a matter of minutes,” Marceau said. “From there, it is a simple matter to pipe the viral agent through.”

  Che flipped the holo back to the base’s feed and stared thoughtfully at Bijin in his lab. “So we proceed with the original plan and let them catch us, lulling them into thinking they have outwitted us,” he murmured.

  He looked at Marceau, eyes narrowing as he gave the man a decisive nod. “This sounds promising. I have a comm scheduled with the minister shortly. Rin Zhou will be pleased with this update.”

  DERELICT SHIP

  Shadow Recon DAP Helios, GNS Scimitar

  One AU outside Atliekas nebula

  Deep inside the NSA, analysts quietly retasked two Starshot buoys to perform a sensor sweep along the coordinates the drug lord Jurgens had provided. The sensor suites within the buoys were classified, and few knew they existed. The buoys executed the sweep, and then sent the results back to NSA headquarters.

  Analysts then forwarded the information to Colonel Valenti. She, in turn, pushed the data to a stealthed DAP Helios, floating silently just outside the Atliekas Nebula.

  The sensor sweep had been at the highest resolution, offering exact positioning of each object within a very narrow area. This allowed the Helios to make a Scharnhorst jump with precision accuracy.

  The ship the buoys’ scans had found did not react in any way to the unexpected appearance of the stealthed ship, nor had those aboard the Helios expected it to. The craft behaved almost as if it were derelict, drifting aimlessly in space.

  The team aboard the Helios was suited in full drakeskin gear, with supplemental ES hazmat shielding. They carried with them a case that would be able to safely contain the vial they had come to obtain.

  A portable decontamination unit had been introduced into the Helios’s airlock system, and everyone who entered the derelict vessel would be required to pass through it before entering the ship.

  {Five minutes out,} the pilot reported.

  The team leader responded with a two-click, and then motioned for the three who would accompany her to do a final gear check.

  {Hold up. I’m seeing evidence this ship’s been breached recently,} the pilot sent suddenly. {No evidence of any other vessels in the area, but be advised. Please proceed with caution.}

  {Copy that,} the team leader sent.

  The Helios settled gently against the outer hull of the other ship, and one of the team members affixed a Bravo Charlie onto its hatch. When the telltale flashed green, the team lead gave the signal, and four ghosts slipped through the airlock and onto the ship.

  Five minutes later, the team lead was back on the ship’s net.

  {I have identified five dead—three crew, and two who match the description of Jurgens’ properties manager and her assistant.}

  The woman’s voice was steady, but there was something in her tone that caught the pilot’s attention.

  {Bloody battle?} he asked.

  {Not the kind you’re thinking,} came the reply. {Looks like the virus did a number on them first. They put up a fight, all right, but it wasn’t much of one.}

  The pilot exchanged a swift glance with the copilot.

  She swept a hand through the cockpit’s holo, bringing up the aft cabin doors to double-check the seal that separated the cargo bay from the cockpit.

  Another voice came on the net. {Yeah, this place has been tossed, Captain. Someone got here before we did.}

  {Check anyway,} came the terse response. {And someone see if they can access ship’s record on this boat.}

  {Already on it,} the ship’s tech witch and flight engineer said. {It’s looking like…. Well, hell’s bells.}

  {That tells me nothing, Specialist,} the team leader said sharply.

  {Sorry, ma’am. I’ll forward you the feed.}

  The flight engineer paused as she let the footage of the Akkadian infiltration stream to the combat net.

  {I have confirmation. Repeat, I have confirmation. The vial’s not here. The Akkadians got here first.}

  REVEALED

  Akkadian Base

  An-Yang Dust Belt

  Proxima Centauri

  The information that Sam had gleaned from the other workstations proved something was afoot. She’d immediately recognized the hantavirus from the Center’s L4 lab. This particular vial was the chiral version.

  Because chiral viruses could not infect humans, it presented no danger to anyone on the base. Also because of that, the inner antigen vial had not been included. Sam worried about where its paired, non-chiral twin might be, and feared that it was on its way here to join them.

  Now that there was no longer any doubt in her mind that she was being held inside an Akkadian base, she looked for ways she could throw a wrench into the works without them knowing.

  The Project Rufus team back at the Center hadn’t studied what it might take to break the entanglement that tied a cloned chiral pair to its original. That was
scheduled for a later research phase, so that option was out.

  As a physicist, Sam had her opinions on how to break an existing quantum entanglement between a set of organisms, but she hadn’t had an opportunity to test her theory. She feared that, rather than break entanglement altogether, altering one virus would simply send the command for the other to reassort itself in the same manner.

  If that were the case, the only thing she’d end up doing was rendering the existing antigen useless, and the very last thing she wanted to do was unleash a new virus on the settled worlds that had no antigen to counteract it.

  But her abilities were limited. Sam hadn’t lied to Marceau; although she knew a substantial amount of chemistry, the kind that crossed over into her fields of study, she wasn’t a biochemist. Beyond that, there was the probability that Bijin would be able to tell instantly that she’d meddled, and she would have no good answer to give them as to why.

  I really don’t want to find out how they’d respond to that, she thought as she laid her tattooed hand onto the 3D printer to deposit more copies of her breadcrumb app.

  The soft whoosh of the lab door opening had her looking up from the holo to see Marceau approaching at a rapid pace. She stood and braced herself—for what, she didn’t know.

  He lifted his hand almost imperiously, ordering her forward with a flick of his fingers. “Come with me, doctor.”

  He didn’t stipulate why; he simply turned and headed toward the door, expecting her to follow.

  Sam hesitated for a brief moment, indecision paralyzing her.

  As if he could sense it, Marceau turned back and shot her an impatient look. “Now, doctor.”

  Not wanting to raise suspicions, Sam complied.

  There is always the possibility you’ll find a few new places to drop breadcrumbs, she reminded herself.

  Marceau escorted her to another lab down the hall. It was empty save for Bijin, who stood beside a holoscreen that displayed the image of a laboratory glove box. Inside the box was a vial.