Esther's Story: Special Duty (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 4)

by Jonathan Brazee

  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 F-AID 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 F-AID 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 F-AID 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 stupid 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 F-AID. “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 sm
all 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 Michelle, 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 F-AID 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 F-AID 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.

  For the people who had the virus, they went through a surface contamination, then were sent to Building A receiving, where Dr. Ericsson and her staff conducted more detailed tests.

  Esther thought it disheartening to know that the compound was designated as a “contaminated area.” They were there to fight the virus, not harbor it. But it made sense. Sick people were coming to them, and sick people brought the virus with them. That was why egress from the compound was more difficult. Every single person leaving had to enter the decon chamber, which was a 1.5-meter-wide by 2.3-meter-tall container that looked like a walk-in cooler. Once inside, the person was bombarded with irradiation, ultrasonic, and chemical washes that should kill any virus on the outside of the body. Next, they went through another scanner. Anyone still contaminated had the virus inside of them, and they were denied egress. They were to be returned to the compound, by force if necessary, by the single police officer the government had sent to stand outside the compound.

  Bing had told them that this was set in stone, and after she, Jim, and Michelle had discussed just what he meant, they didn’t quite know what they could do if the cop outside the gate couldn’t or wouldn’t stop anyone from leaving. Officially, the project was not armed, as was F-AID policy, but she and Jim had packed along a single case of M99’s, something they hadn’t yet mentioned to anyone else. Esther and Jim decided that those weapons woul
d only see the light of day if it came to protecting the camp—the director’s story about Manteo’s Grace had a significant impact on their thinking—but they would not use them to stop people from leaving. A better choice would be to simply gang-rush the person or people and hope their PPE’s maintained integrity in any scuffle.

  Jim, Michelle, and she watched the first few new patients go through the entry procedures. The three guards on duty seemed to have a handle on it.

  Esther had told Michelle to make her own hours. She and Jim would be 12 on and 12 off, not that she thought she’d be anywhere else when she was awake. She’d been somewhat surprised that the F-AID team was berthed in a nearby hotel, largely abandoned as people fled the capital. She had assumed that they would stay in the compound, but when she mentioned that, Bing had said that he needed to get people out of their PPEs where they could get a good meal, clean up, and relax.

  That made sense to her. Watching person after person die had to mess up even the most hardened of them. Still, she saw the cot placed behind his work station, and she thought the project leader would probably spend most of his time there.

  Esther, on the other hand, was hardened. She’d killed before, often. She wasn’t going to be bothered by people dying.

  “Let’s check out Receiving, then the lab. If Bing doesn’t have anything for us, you go get some shut-eye,” she told Jim.

  Together, they walked up to Building A, Receiving. The prone patients were gone, and chairs had been set up for the line of people. Some looked at them with sullen eyes as the two of them walked up, probably resenting the fact that the two of them didn’t have the virus while they did, but most looked up at them with hope. They were the mighty Federation, after all, and they must have the cure.

  I hope we do, I really do.

  Esther and Jim stepped in front of the first man in line and into receiving.

  “Please wait . . . oh, it’s you two. If you want to see Dr. Ericsson, she’s in Treatment and Collecting,” Henri Monterey said from where he was interviewing a middle-aged and an obviously frightened woman.