by Rick Partlow
“Warning,” an automated voice sounded in her helmet headphones, “decontamination procedures initiating. Please remain in your suit until complete.”
I most assuredly will remain in my suit, she thought as a white mist sprayed out of hundreds of nozzles built into the walls, floor and ceiling. The opaque white haze surrounded her for long seconds before she heard the fans activate and the mist began to clear away. Then the face shield on her helmet darkened as ultraviolet lights bathed her, and the shield stayed dark for well over two minutes. Finally, the light switched off and the final step in the process began: high-pressure jets of superheated steam that scoured her vacc suit from head to toe.
After almost a full minute, the jets died down, condensation dripping from the ceiling for a moment before high-speed fans sucked it away. The hum of the fans faded and was swallowed up in the loud clank and sibilant hiss of the inner lock door unlatching and sliding aside. Shannon stepped out into the cluttered and lived-in suit storage area, where she was met by a pair of enlisted technicians who immediately began helping her out of her vacuum suit.
“Thank God,” she sighed as she pulled her helmet off its yoke and handed it to one of the enlisted.
“Feels good to get out of that thing, doesn’t it?”
The question had come from the doorway of the suit storage area and when she looked around she saw the man that had asked it. He was a homely, horse-faced man with the shoulders of a dockworker, and he was dressed in baggy, ill-fitting shorts and an untucked shirt stained with God knew what…and he was possibly the best mind in the Republic in the biological sciences.
“It surely does, Dr. Mandila,” Shannon said, yanking off a glove and using her newly-bare hand to wipe the sweat-matted hair back from her eyes. “But you said you had something?”
“I do indeed,” Rajiv Mandila confirmed. “And had I known it earlier, I could have saved you all the inconvenience of wearing the damned suits in the first place.” He waved a hand and stepped back from the doorway. “Follow me, if you would.”
Shannon hurriedly pulled off the rest of her vacc suit and left it for the enlisted men to hang up, then headed after the broad-bodied scientist. The door out of the storage area led through a short hallway to a much larger chamber crammed with isolation tanks and analytical equipment. Three more technicians went from one machine to another, keeping an eye on the ongoing tests, but Dr. Mandila was standing beside the holographic display projector for the electron microscope.
“I know what killed those people,” Mandila told her, “and I know why we didn’t find anyone alive out in the fields.” He waved a hand at the display, where Shannon could see a…something. It was vaguely spherical, or possibly more egg-shaped, but it had some sort of protuberances on it in seemingly random spots and she couldn’t escape the impression that it was artificial, for all that it seemed to have the fuzzy roughness of the natural.
“What is it?” she asked, stepping closer and looking at the thing from a different angle. “Is it a virus, or bacteria, or…?”
“It is none of the above,” Mandila said, shaking his head, an expression of distaste on his face. “It may have started out as a bacterium of some sort, but it is basically a nanotechnological assassin.”
“It’s manufactured?” Shannon asked sharply, head snapping around towards him.
“As manufactured as a smart bandage,” he said with a nod. “Or a biomech.”
Shannon frowned, her eyes darting between him and the projection. “Doctor, are you saying…”
“All I can say with certainty, Colonel,” he interrupted her, “is that this thing,” he jabbed a finger at the image, “attacks the central nervous system in much the same way as nerve agents like sarin did: by inhibiting the effects of the enzyme cholinesterase and basically causing the victim to stop breathing. The main difference between that and a nerve gas is that this is very, very contagious.”
“What?” she snapped, alarm in her face. “Then why did you say we didn’t have to wear the vacc suits?”
“Because it also has a programmable shelf life,” he replied. “It can be told exactly how long to live, and after that it will cease functioning. That shuttle that did the unauthorized fly-by here just before the colony stopped communicating through the comsats…the one you said came from an unidentified freighter? It undoubtedly deployed these things via some sort of aerosol device. They began multiplying immediately on exposure to oxygen, and killed most of the colony within minutes. The ones who were outside the city, tending to crops or animals or machinery, they returned to see what had happened---hours or even a day later. And these things were still around and still replicating, and still able to enter the body via the skin.” He shook his head. “Not one survived, because of this. And then, 72 hours after they were deployed, all of them terminated. They are as harmless as dust now.”
“And they can’t be turned back on?” Shannon asked, eyeing the image warily.
“No,” he declared with utter certainty. “There is no mechanism to allow it.” He snorted. “It is the perfect weapon to conquer a world, though, no? You kill everyone on it, but leave their buildings, their machinery, their crops intact, and you just walk in and take everything. This is bad, Colonel Stark. This is very, very bad.”
“Can you find a way to counteract this?” she asked him. “Something to shut these things down or…I don’t know, inoculate people somehow?”
“Colonel,” he told her, “I could not even make these, much less shut them down. This is at least decades ahead of what we can do with nanotechnology...maybe even centuries. Our smart bandages…the genetically engineered bacteria they use to knit flesh and blood vessels, they cannot even reproduce on their own outside the chemicals of the bandage. The medical nano we use in hospitals for more advanced treatments such as genetic surgery, they are very fragile and short-lived and again, cannot replicate themselves.” Mandila shook his head. “I can’t tell you how I know---it’s a gut feeling, but I know just as surely as if I had seen it myself: this is the work of the same technology that gave the Protectorates their biomech armies.”
“Damn it,” Shannon said, rubbing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “This doesn’t make any sense. If they can do this, why do it here?”
“Why invade Aphrodite ten years ago?” Mandila asked in counterpoint, reminding her of the first time they’d met, investigating the aftermath of the Protectorate incursion onto that colony world.
“As a test,” she intuited his meaning, “to see if he could do it?” She shook her head. “But he wouldn’t use this on Earth, would he? There are still Russians on Earth…he wouldn’t kill them all off, would he?”
“What do you mean ‘he,’ Colonel?” Mandila asked, his bushy black eyebrows coming together in confusion. “Isn’t Antonov dead?”
Shannon realized that Mandila wasn’t cleared to hear about the possibility of the Protectorate possessing the ability to duplicate people and had already made a decision to fill him in when she was interrupted by her ‘link beeping for attention.
“Stark,” she answered, tapping the button on her earpiece.
“Ma’am,” the voice that spoke into her right ear was that of Lt. Romanowski, her aid, who was back on the Patrol cruiser Triton, “there’s a transmission coming through the Instell Comsat. It’s repeating and…ma’am, you need to see this.”
“Patch it through to the commo console in the lab, Romanowski,” she told him, tapping the earpiece again to end the call.
Shannon stepped across the room to the lab’s small communications console and reluctantly touched the control to power it up. She knew that she really wouldn’t want to see what it was about to show her.
The holographic projector flickered to life and there stood a straight-backed man who seemed to be posing for a statue. He wore a uniform jacket patterned off the same one he had worn over 200 years ago and he stood in front of the tricolored Protectorate flag, but it was his face that drew her attention. It was
the face of a classical conqueror, hard-edged with an aquiline nose, piercing gray eyes and a flamboyant mustache tinged in silver…and it was a face she had seen in her nightmares for the last four years.
He looked into the video pickup and smiled.
“My name,” he said with a deep, sonorous voice, “is General Sergei Pavlovitch Antonov.”
* * *
“For years, you have been told the lie that I am dead, slain by the spineless hostage you call a President. I am here to tell you that this is not so. I am alive and I am among you.” Antonov took a breath and his face grew grim.
“Twice, I have attempted to free the people of Earth from the tyranny of the Americans who have deceived the poor and powerless into thinking that their Republic government represents all the nations of the world. Twice, I have failed. I have thought long on this, and I know now why. It is said that when Rome ruled the known world with an iron hand, crushing her enemies and subjugating the peoples of the world under her boot, that even the barbarians who burned the city did not want to destroy the Roman Empire. What they wanted was to become the Roman Empire, to preserve the infrastructure, kill off the rulers and take their place.
"This failed, as I failed, because while that infrastructure existed, Rome could still use it against their enemies. And that has been my weakness: I wanted to preserve the infrastructure of the Republic while trying to behead its corrupt government, but this is a doomed strategy and it ends...right...now." Antonov ground out the last three words, his eyes flaring with rage.
"If the poor and oppressed people of Earth will not rise up when I bring the running dog military of the American imperialists to their knees, then you will die alongside them. What has come is just the beginning. Thousands have died, but unless you---the poor, the oppressed, the powerless---rise up and fight for yourselves, you will die in the millions. This is your first and last warning. I have said before that I will lead this world to freedom or I will see it burn." He held a fist in front of his chest, clenched and shaking. "The fire has started. Either rise before it, or fall beneath its flames."
“End playback,” President Jameson ordered, his voice a dangerous growl. He watched as Antonov’s features froze in mid-pronunciation, his face seemingly caught in mid-snarl. Jameson visibly fought to regain his composure, taking in a deep breath and then letting it out slowly before he turned to Jason McKay and General Hikaru Kage, who sat across the desk from him. “So, gentlemen, this message was broadcast in the open on the Instell Comsats for all to see.” The President sat back in his chair and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair. “And see it they have. Ms. Fiorentino?”
“Yes, sir,” Marquesa Fiorentino, the President’s chief of staff stepped forward from where she’d been standing against the far wall of Jameson’s private office, silent as they’d watched the recording. She was an elegant woman, Jason thought: she was dressed in an unassuming business suit but she made it look like a designer gown. “In just the thirty-six hours since this message was broadcast, there have been riots in Mexico City, Doha, Panama City and Abuja.”
“They were put down by my troops,” interjected General Kage, a deep frown on a face carved from amber, “but not without some loss of life.”
And I’ll bet you cried all night about that, McKay thought, looking at the man through a jaundiced eye. Hikaru Kage was the head of the Republic Guard Corps---formerly known as the Colonial Guard; it had been expanded to include a Homeworld Guard that was tasked with protecting Earth from external threats. In the three years of its existence, it had mostly been used to quell riots and insurrections. Kage had the harsh, deeply-lined face of a hard man, and it was truth in advertising.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Jameson said. “Go on, Marquesa.”
“There have also been no less than ten attacks on the virtual infrastructure by netdivers associated with various radical groups,” Fiorentino reported in her business-like tone, “six acts of major sabotage of construction equipment in various cities, including Houston and Cleveland; and as of ten o’clock this morning Eastern Standard Time, a No Confidence Motion has been filed in the Senate by fourteen Senators from the East and Southblocs.”
McKay noticed Jameson once again working to keep his temper under control at that last pronouncement.
“Thanks, Marquesa. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to talk to these two officers in private for a bit.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” the woman said with a curt nod, then headed for the office’s outer door.
Jameson waited until the door had closed behind her before turning back to McKay and Kage. “Gentlemen, we have a major problem.” He paused, snorting with a humorless laugh. “Let me correct myself,” he said, holding up a finger, “we have several major problems. We have a series of terrorist attacks here on the homeworld, we have a major strike against one of the new colonies that can only be described as an act of war, we have a public announcement of responsibility by a man who’s been dead for four years and now we have a panic on our hands that could bring down not just my administration but the whole Republic government if we don’t head it off.” He looked between the two generals, his eyes blazing with barely-controlled fury. “Have I forgotten anything?”
“Yes, sir,” McKay said with bland indifference to the President’s mood, knowing that if Shannon were there, she would have stopped him. “We also have the raiders attacking our shipping in the new colony systems.”
Jameson fixed him with a glare that could have cut through steel. “Yes, thank you, General McKay,” he said with strained civility. “I had nearly forgotten about that. And of course, you believe that all these things are connected?”
“Sir, whether or not I believe it, someone is claiming they’re connected,” McKay waved at the frozen message hologram. “And you heard Dr. Mandila’s findings from Rhiannon: that attack was done with nanotechnology decades ahead of our own. That means the Protectorate is behind that attack.”
“How do we know,” Kage demanded, “that the Protectorate or perhaps these Russian criminals didn’t just create this recording of Antonov using computer imaging? To unite their forces or perhaps to divide us?”
McKay stood and stepped around the desk, looking Antonov’s image in the face. “Sir, I think we have to consider the possibility that they have the capability to duplicate people right down to their memories. It may be that this is a hoax, as General Kage has said; but can we take the chance of assuming that?”
“And you think our focus should be on invading Novoye Rodina?” Jameson assumed.
“Not invading, sir,” McKay replied, shaking his head. “That would require too much manpower and too many casualties. Our focus should be taking out the alien technology they’ve been using to produce weapons like that nanovirus. If a bunch of Russians want to live on that rock afterward, I couldn’t care less.”
“I agree with General McKay,” Kage said. McKay had to force himself not to let the shock he felt at that evidence itself on his face. “They could not have made this nanovirus without the alien machinery they found. They can’t be allowed to do this again. But destroying it…” The Peruvian officer shrugged expressively. “I admit, I would rather we take control of it. The scientific advances it could give us would be worth the cost.”
Jameson nodded slowly. “All right, yes,” he admitted, “we need to do something about the Protectorate. Despite what I hoped four years ago, they are still a major threat. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, gentlemen. Whether it’s Antonov or the Protectorate or the Russian crime families, someone already has this technology and for all we know, they have it sitting outside Capital City right now.” He thumped a hand against his desk. “We have to deal with the immediate threat before we start sending the Fleet 200 light years away.”
“We have a full court press on finding this Yuri that Colonel Podbyrin told us about,” McKay said, hands clasping behind his back as he paced in front of the desk, struggling mightily not to become a
rgumentative with the President. “We also have people sifting through dozens of hours of surveillance footage, trying to find out how the explosives were smuggled into Houston.”
“McKay,” Jameson said with impatience in his voice, “you were the one who wanted to treat this like a military operation, not a criminal investigation. Why aren’t you just rolling up everyone in this Russian bratva and putting the screws to them?”
“Sir, they are almost entirely off the grid,” McKay told him. “That means we would basically have to arrest and interrogate a sizable percentage of the Russian exile population.”
“If manpower is a factor,” Kage put in, “I would gladly volunteer as many of my Homeworld Guard Corps troops as you need.”
“Yes, lack of available troops is a factor,” McKay said with a nod, “but the main objection I have is, cracking down in a visible and heavy-handed fashion, we may be accelerating the next attack.” He looked President Jameson in the eye. “You said you’re worried they already have the nanovirus here on Earth. If we round up a couple thousand Russian exiles and start interrogating them, they might just panic and use it on the easiest target they can find.”
Jameson seemed to consider that for a long moment, then he nodded slowly. “All right, McKay. We’ll do it your way and keep this low-key, but I’m giving you a time limit. Find this Yuri in a week or we go in heavy and we go in with everything we have.”
“Yes, Mr. President,” McKay acknowledged. He paused for a moment, choosing his next words carefully. “Sir, if I might offer a suggestion…”
“Don’t be shy, Jason,” President Jameson said drily, cocking an eyebrow.
“I know we’re going to be concentrating on the immediate threat, sir; but if you’d allow it, I’d like to bring Admiral Minishimi into the loop on this. That way, if the need arises or the opportunity presents itself, we can have the logistics and planning in place for a strike on Novoye Rodina.”
