The Demon Plagues

by David VanDyke

  She hardly took a breath as she vented her bile in a running monologue, channeling her drill instructors and her abusive ex-husband and her lacrosse coach and that DI in Full Metal Jacket, calculated to stun and overwhelm the men until they loaded Repeth aboard the humming Osprey transport. The chaplain followed Jill onto the aircraft, where her blazing eyes dared anyone to interfere with her patient.

  The transport team was sweating and only too happy to get away from the most cross-grained and viper-tongued minister of the Lord they had ever encountered.

  “What the hell was that all about?” muttered one Marine once they were out of earshot.

  “Must be a lesbian thing,” said another nervously.

  Staff Sergeant Gaona coughed, then spoke in a stentorian voice. “Belay that, Edwards. This is the new Corps. Embrace the rainbow.”

  After a distinct pause, all six of them burst into gasping, raucous, relieved laughter. When they could breathe again, they headed down to pick up another patient. The corporal said, “Remember, Staff Sergeant, that Chaplain'll be coming back eventually.”

  “Oh, shit. And she knows my name.”

  On the Osprey, Forman strapped Jill in – Navy chaplains afloat were trained in as many medical tasks as possible – and shook with relief when the aircraft finally lifted. She bowed her head and said a heartfelt prayer of thanks, certain now that Jill would get away. She resolved to have a little talk with one Staff Sergeant Gaona when she returned to the ship.

  ***

  Jill opened her eyes from her half-dream to the bilious green glow of the chem-light and the stench of unwashed bodies, not sure whether she had fallen asleep. She wished she had, just to bring her a few more hours closer to go-time. Closer to begin, closer to finish, closer to get back to Rick. Wrinkling her nose, she rolled over and pillowed her head on her combat ruck.

  -5-

  Markis wondered if the Council bought his line of complete bullshit about the cyber attack. There were so many holes in that narrative it would keep the Council wrapped around their own axles for a week.

  He touched his screen to run the application that enabled his virtual clone, then got up to talk to Rick. The rest would see Chairman Markis nodding, looking puzzled, fidgeting, scratching his head and the like in response to their blatherings. The software would also select Council members to speak according to the rules of procedure. They’d never know the difference. His staff would summarize everything in a transcript.

  “Any word from the submarine op?”

  “No, sir. We don’t expect it yet,” Rick said apologetically.

  “I know. I’m just…nervous. I could use a drink.”

  “I’ll open the bar, sir.” He stood up from his control console to open a cabinet with a selection of glasses and liquors.

  It was good to be able to drink again, to toss off a shot of decent Scotch and not worry that one would turn into a dozen and then into a blackout episode. Whatever the Plague had taken from him, it had given him that. That and a lot more.

  DJ thought about Ezekiel, and Vincent, and Elizabeth, precious gifts. Nine, eight and seven, one a year until Elise' steam reconfigured the Eden Plague to lower fertility. That and sheer separation. Three kids were plenty to deal with. Maybe if – when – the world was finally at peace they could dispense with them and just depend on the researchers’ predictions of a child every ten or fifteen years for an average Eden couple.

  He saluted Rick with his glass, and they tossed off the single malt with relish.

  Rick smiled at Markis, a winning young man that looked a lot like his father and mother, with Zeke’s grin but Cassie’s furrowed brow when he was thinking.

  DJ drifted into his memories, missing Zeke yet again. He’d been the key to everything; he’d led the team that rescued Elise Wallis, who had become Elise Markis, from the clutches of Jervis Jenkins III and INS, Inc. He’d brought the tiny band of revolutionaries to the forgotten Sosthenes Bunker; he’d rescued his own family and died doing it, but his efforts had provided the Free Communities with its spymaster, his widow Cassandra, a cyber engineer par excellance in his son Rick, and his daughter Millicent as the chairman’s superb personal assistant. For the quasi-leader of a loose group of free nations these trustworthies were an absolute godsend.

  Zeke had also left them a legacy of honor, a narrative that helped weld the disparate groups of Edens together in common cause. Every grade school in the FC taught the story of Ezekiel Johnstone, martyr to their revolution.

  Of course, Zeke hadn’t intended to be a martyr; like most heroes, he just wanted what was best for his family and friends. He'd had no bigger ambitions; he had left that to DJ, but thus do legends grow.

  “How long do you think it will take for the leak to reach the UG Presidents?” Rick asked.

  “Good question; one I’d like to know the answer to for future disinformation operations. Here’s one for you, since you’re the subject matter expert. How long will it take them to figure out your cyber attack is a feint and a bluff?”

  “Oh, sir, but it’s not. I designed it to be as vicious and tenacious as possible. It will give them fits for weeks, even if it does nothing but lock up their ICE. Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics absorb a lot of resources, and I intend to make them burn RAM for a while. They will have to take some of it offline just for their peace of mind. Their command and control will be hell.”

  “Good. I want them chasing ghosts and phantoms. I want Spooky and his team to have as much time and distraction as possible.”

  “You want them to come home.” Rick put down his glass, running a finger around the rim to make a squeaking sound.

  “Of course. They are my friends and colleagues.”

  “Sir…you don’t have to play the politician with me.” His eyes were haunted. “Just tell me…tell me they’re going to make it.”

  Markis pulled himself up short, setting down his glass to look closely at his dead friend’s son. “I’m sorry, Rick. I’m concerned about them too. I didn’t like the odds of the mission but the payoff is just too big not to take the risk. But what am I missing? Something personal in it for you?”

  He looked down, a young man’s embarrassment in the presence of a revered elder. “Jill Repeth,” he whispered.

  “The Marine? You better call her Gunnery Sergeant or she’ll kick your ass. Besides, she’s…” Realization dawned on his face ”Oh, shut up, DJ. I’m sorry, Rick.” That’s when you know you’re getting old, when you miss the obvious and start talking to yourself out loud in the middle of a conversation. “Oldsters like me forget that age doesn’t matter much anymore, not when everyone will live to be a thousand looking like twenty. So…you and Jill, huh?” He slapped Rick’s shoulder, rocking the slight man sideways.

  “Uh…I hope so. But she’s so…so…” He waved his hands, losing words.

  “Intense? Maybe that’s why she likes you. Opposites attract.”

  “But what if she doesn’t come back!” Markis could hear the anguish in Rick’s voice, the fear of losing the shining jewel of his life, his pearl of great price, before she had even been truly his. The chemistry of infatuation was completely natural; it was one mental illness no plague could cure.

  “There’s always that risk.” Markis put his hand back on Rick’s shoulder, fatherly. “Have faith. They are the best we have, and the people they are going up against won’t know what hit them.”

  He hoped it was true.

  -6-

  For twenty hours the special ops team dozed while the fast transport pounded along on its enormous hydrofoils at nearly sixty knots, heading for New Zealand. When their GPS told them they were near the rendezvous, Colonel Nguyen initiated the first stage.

  Tension brought the stink of unwashed bodies to a new level, subtle smells the passive air scrubbers couldn’t filter out. Just like a parachute drop, Repeth thought. All you want to do is get the hell out of the vehicle and into the open air.

  She unsealed the hatch at the Colonel’
s signal, and then threw the lever that initiated the machinery that broke open the cargo container. The sides of the big box, forty-eight feet by ten feet six inches by ten-six, split open along the seams. Three of the four sides fell only a few inches to rest with slight clangs against the sides of nearby containers; one long side fell all the way to the deck with a loud metallic thump. This set the clock ticking; the noise couldn’t be hidden.

  Whirring servos pushed the top of the container sideways in the direction of the opened side. That flat metal piece soon joined its twin on the deck with an even louder sound reminiscent of thunder.

  As soon as it was clear Repeth rolled out of the hatch to take up a position on top of the submersible, the muzzle of her weapon sweeping the open space. The rest of the team followed her, scanning the cargo hold for freighter crew.

  The lights were low, bare emergency glows to comply with regulations. So much the better; the invaders’ vision was well-adjusted to darkness. No one was in sight, and they fanned out, four teams of two forming in front of the personnel doors to the hold. At Spooky’s mark they opened the doors and began to hunt down the crew with brisk efficiency.

  Ten minutes later the six-member complement of the highly automated fast transport lay in a crew cabin, tranquilized and newly Plagued.

  Standard procedure was to infect everyone they encountered on these operations. It not only saved lives in the long run, it drastically reduced the chance of some hero trying to retake the ship. Edens were never suicidal, and had to be motivated by a higher purpose to be belligerent. In this case it should be all over by the time they woke up.

  Bitzer took the helm of the ship, slowing it down to its most stable speed for the exhumation of the mini-sub. They stripped off the shielding from the submersible and dumped that over the side. Then, opening the top cargo hatch, they brought the vehicle up on deck using the ship’s crane. There they checked it over one last time, topped off its electrical charge with the ship’s power feed, then prepared to put it over the side. They also turned off the Stetson’s identification transponder that reported the ship’s position by satellite, and brought the ship to idle in the open ocean. The sun stood low in the eastern sky.

  Just over the horizon, if their intelligence was correct, the submarine tender UGS Frank Cable should be preparing its own rescue submersible, a remote-controlled behemoth much larger than the team's little sub. Called a Submarine Rescue Diving Recompression System, it was scheduled to exercise its capability with the UGS Nebraska, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, or ‘boomer.’

  Passive radar emissions from the Cable over the horizon, and some quick calculations of signal strength, confirmed the presence of the naval ship. Stetson stayed far enough away not to be seen on radar, and there was no reason for the Cable to be looking for them.

  FC Intelligence had said this was to be a comms-out exercise, simulating a damaged submarine resting on the sea floor, needing crew rescue. The Cable’s unmanned pressurized rescue module would be lowered into the water, and then remotely piloted via an armored cable reeled out by the enormous system above. Two thousand feet of wire wound on the cylinder, enough to reach most potential crashes.

  As soon as they confirmed the presence of the UGS ship, the team boarded the mini-sub, setting the computerized and automated controls of the crane to put them over the side into the water. The Stetson, acting on a programmed command, would resume its journey toward New Zealand. Its crew would wake up in a few hours and regain control of their ship.

  The hatch of the little submarine slammed with chill finality. It was do or die now; there was no going back.

  They descended rapidly toward the massive nuclear submarine waiting silently below. The team yawned and swallowed as the internal systems adjusted to the hull pressure. Minutes ticked off and the depth gauge showed five hundred feet before Bitzer flicked the switch that enabled the low-powered but highly-accurate computer-processed sonar system.

  A picture appeared on the color screen in front of him, a torpedo shape more than five hundred feet long showing off to one side. He steered the mini-sub quickly in the direction of the gigantic Nebraska. Inside it they would have heard the sound of the submersible’s electrical engines, their propulsion screws, and now the high-pitched ping of the sonar, and mistaken them for the Cable's remote rescue sub.

  With a deft touch Bitzer brought their mini-sub over the top of its larger cousin, using the ultra-accurate processed image mode of the sonar, then the lighted video camera underneath, to drop their docking mechanism and flexible transfer skirt over the Nebraska’s deck hatch. This arrangement, just like the real pressurized rescue module, used the force of the ocean to seal the two vehicles together like a rubber stopper in a bathtub drain.

  The team gathered around the floor hatch that led directly to the Nebraska’s forward hatch. “Switch on comms.” They were using UWB, ultra-wideband secure tactical radio headsets; even in the restrictive environment of a submarine, as long as there was the tiniest opening in a bulkhead not blocked by metal – such as where cabling or fiber optics penetrated – signals would find their way through the maze of the sub’s interior.

  “Comms set and synching, three, two, one, mark. Noseplugs.”

  Everyone fit filter plugs into their nostrils and began breathing in through their noses, out through their mouths.

  “Prep the gas.”

  Doc turned a wheel on a steel tank. A faint hissing began as a valve released a colorless, odorless, tasteless soporific gas into the interior of their own submersible. Between their Plague and the filters, the team would be able to operate in the stuff for a while. If not, stims would keep them awake until it wore off.

  Spooky stared at the hatchway of the sub below for a full minute. “It’s opening,” he finally observed. The hatch below swung back and he shone a powerful flashlight downward to blind the crewmen below.

  An annoyed voice came from below. “Hey, they didn't say anyone would be coming down. Can you get that light out of my eyes?" His voice trailed off as the heavy gas drifted silently downward into the larger submarine. Two thuds came in quick succession.

  “Go.” Spooky led the team, dropping like a gymnast down through the tube, barely touching the rim to break his fall. Muzik handed down another heavy metal pressure tank and the Colonel manhandled the container of compressed sleep gas down onto the deck next to a ventilation intake. He opened the stopcock, beginning its hissing release into the rest of the sub. The others followed rapidly, exactly as rehearsed.

  Two crewmen sprawled awkwardly near one of the open pressure doors, empty cardboard boxes dumped on the deck. It looked like they had planned to receive some fresh food from the real rescue module. Doc put a portable tranquilizer gun against each of their necks and pulled the trigger. Compressed air shot Eden Plague and sleep drugs into their bloodstreams. In eight hours they would wake up new men.

  “Let’s go, we’re on the clock.” They split up, each team with a separate mission.

  Jill darted through her chosen hatch, Doc Fitzhugh right behind her. They passed two more unconscious crewmen, and Doc doped them too. Down two narrow ladders and past a dozen more crew members in various states of unconsciousness. One had tumbled through a floor hatch and broken his neck. Jill grabbed her companion’s webbing, hauling him away from the fallen man despite his hoarse whispered protests.

  “No time for heroic measures, Doc.”

  “If I could EP him, then do CPR for long enough, he could live!”

  “Sorry, this is too important and you know it. No time. Just dope him, maybe he’ll get lucky.”

  Doc shot the fallen man with his trank gun and Jill dragged her comrade forcibly down the corridor.

  Thirty seconds later they ran up against a closed pressure door. Jill put her eye to the tiny vision port and swore under her breath. “I see two guys up and around. The gas hasn’t got here yet. They don’t look concerned but that could end any moment. Help me get this thing open.”
<
br />   She twisted the dogging handles and they both seized the lockdown ring. Like the perfectly-maintained machine it was, the wheel spun on its axis several turns until it slammed to a stop. Jill was already pushing the heavy door open.

  Aiming low, she fired a short burst at each of their feet from her PW10, a FreeCom submachine gun specially designed for the Needleshock ammo. Sounds like ripping paper accompanied the groups of ten or a dozen needles that stitched across their calves. Some bounced off the deck and ricocheted around the room, discharging their capacitors as they struck anything conductive. One fragment stung her cheek. The two crewmen convulsed as they fell, out cold.

  “Damn, I told them we should have developed a lower-velocity round for these soft missions. Put on your ballistic glasses. We can’t afford to lose eyes, even for a little while.”

  “Right.” Doc popped a dose in each of the fallen, then began rooting around in his waist pack. “Not something I thought I’d need right away…ah, here it is.” They slipped on the clear eye protectors.

  “Come on, come on, where’s the air system? Is that it?” This comment was just to get Doc moving on his next task; he tended to start woolgathering if he was allowed to think too much. Jill slapped the tall metallic cylinder for emphasis and then moved to the other hatch to peer out the thick glass vision port.

  “Whah…”

  Jill turned around to see Fitzhugh swaying on his feet. “Dammit, Doc, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Here…” She grabbed his aid bag and located a stim. Removing the cap she slammed the big exposed needle into Doc’s thigh, pouring a maximum dose into his system to counter the gas.

  “Ow, okay, I’m good now, I’m good.” He took the needle back from her, replacing the cap and sliding it back into his aid bag. “Damn, my heart’s beating like a jackhammer.”