Plague Ship

little wonder they were always the center of attention. And no more so than here, at a Responsivist function, to celebrate the grand opening of their new headquarters.

“Congratulations, Thom,” a famed director said, sidling up and kissing Heidi’s burnished cheek with easy familiarity. “You, too, Heids. You should both be very proud of yourselves. I know Dr. Cooper would be.” He spoke the name reverently. “Future generations will look back at this center as the place where the dark tides of overpopulation were finally pushed back.”

“It will be a beacon of hope for the world,” Heidi Severance replied. “As my father told us, the beginning of the struggle will be the most difficult. But as word spreads and people begin to understand what is at stake, ours will be seen as the responsible lifestyle.”

“I read in Generations about the declining birthrates in the villages around our new clinic in Sierra Leone,” the director went on. Generations was the group’s biannual magazine.

Severance nodded. “Sited far from where Christian and Muslim missionaries have plied their trade and corrupted the people with their lies, we’ve done better than we hoped. We’re getting the villagers to understand that preventing unwanted children raises their standard of living more than handouts and platitudes from churches.”

“The article didn’t say if we’re explaining how our lives are influenced through intra-brane interference and how we can fight back against it.”

This time, Thom shook his head. “The fact that an alien presence exists in a dimension of the universe parallel to our own isn’t something we feel they can handle just yet. Our guiding philosophy will come a bit later. For now, we’re just content to lower the regional birthrate.” The director accepted this, and saluted the couple with his highball glass, before drifting off into the crowd so the others in the throng hovering around the Severances could add their congratulations.

“He’s a good man,” Heidi whispered to her husband.

“His last film grossed over two hundred million, but his contributions over the past twelve months are down five percent.”

“I’ll talk to Tamara.” Tamara was the director’s new trophy wife and one of Heidi’s protegees.

Thom didn’t seem to hear as he was reaching into his jacket pocket for a vibrating cell phone. He folded it open, said his name, and listened for a minute without changing his facial expression. “Thank you,” he said at last, and refolded the phone. He looked at Heidi. Her shining eyes and smile were brighter than the eleven-carat diamond at her throat. “That was Kovac,” Thom said quietly, so no one else could hear.

“A freighter just reported spotting wreckage floating in the Indian Ocean.”

'Oh my God!”

“It was positively identified from a life raft as the Golden Dawn.” Heidi Severance’s hand went to her neck as her skin grew flush.

“There were no survivors.”

Her smile blossomed, and she gushed, “That is wonderful, simply wonderful.” Thom looked as though a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “A few weeks, darling, and everything we and your father have worked for will come to pass. The world will be reborn, and this time we won’t screw it up.”

“It will be reborn in our image,” Heidi added, taking his hand. She gave no thought to the seven hundred and eighty-three men, women, and children who had perished on the cruise ship, many of them members of her organization. It was only a tiny fraction of the deaths to come.

CHAPTER 11

LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS AFTER REPORTING THE sinking of the Golden Dawn, admitting nothing about their foray aboard, Cabrillo and his team hadn’t yet formed a cohesive plan, but they had a direction. That they were going to get to the bottom of this mystery was never in doubt.

The Corporation ran strictly as a for-profit enterprise, but they were guided by Juan Cabrillo’s moral compass. There were jobs they wouldn’t take, no matter how much money was offered. And then there were opportunities to do the right thing, regardless of profit. As he had done in the past when there was no chance of a payday, Juan had offered his crew the chance to leave the Oregon until the current mission was complete. He had no qualms putting himself in harm’s way for the sake of what was right, but he would never demand it of his crew.

Like the few times before, not a single man or woman aboard ship had accepted the offer. They would follow Cabrillo to the gates of hell. As proud as he was of the technological marvel that was the Oregon, that feeling paled next to what he felt for his crew.

They might have been mercenaries, but they were also the finest people he had ever worked with. And while they had amassed a fortune over the years, it was the unspoken truth among all of them that they put themselves in harm’s way again and again for the same reasons they had during their years of government service. They did it because the world grew more dangerous every day, and if no one else stood up to face it, they would.

The ship was charging hard northward, having cut through the choke point of Bab el Mandeb, or the Gate of Tears, that separated Yemen from the African nation of Djibouti. They were in the Red Sea, and Cabrillo had already called in enough favors with Atlas Marine Services, the Egyptian company that ran the Suez Canal, to see that his ship would be part of the next morning’s only northbound convoy.

It would take eleven hours to transit the one hundred and one miles from Suez to Port Said, but once they were clear their final destination was only a day away.

With the number of vessels heading into and out of the Suez Canal, the shipping lanes in the Red Sea were heavily congested. So as not to arouse undue suspicion from passing ships, Juan had posted a watch on the bridge, even though the Oregon was being piloted from the Op Center belowdecks.

He was on the bridge now, overseeing preparations for taking on a canal pilot in the morning.

Sandstorms raged in the western sky over Africa. The sun setting through burnt sienna clouds cast the bridge in an otherworldly glow. The temperature remained near eighty degrees, and wouldn’t get much cooler when the sun did finally settle over the horizon.

“What a view,” Dr. Huxley commented as she emerged from a secret doorway in the chart room at the back of the pilothouse. As she stared at the distant storm, the ruddy sky made her face glow like a Plains Indian’s. The kind light helped hide her deep exhaustion.

“How’s our patient doing?” Cabrillo asked, unfurling a dog-eared chart across an old, scarred table.

“She should be fine,” Julia replied. “If she’s still asymptomatic by morning, I’ll let her out of isolation.

How are you?”

“There was nothing wrong with me that a hot shower and some rack time couldn’t cure.” Juan used carpenters’ C-clamps to secure the wrinkled map, as the clips built into the chart table had been intentionally snapped off to make the Oregon look as dilapidated as possible. When it came to camouflaging his ship’s true nature, there were no details too small for Cabrillo’s discerning eye. “Have you learned anything more about her experience?”

“Linda’s compiling a report right now of everything we’ve gotten so far, not just my notes but the stuff Mark and Eric have been able to piece together, too. When I spoke with her, she said she should be ready in a half hour.”

Juan glanced at his watch without really looking at the time. “I didn’t expect anything definitive for a few more hours.”

“Murph and Stone are more motivated than usual.”

“Let me guess: they want to impress Miss Dahl with their sleuthing abilities?” Julia nodded. “I’ve taken to calling them the Hardly Boys.” It took a moment for the joke to register, and Juan chuckled. “That works on so many levels.” When Julia smiled, her nose crinkled like a little girl’s. “Thought you’d like that.” An ancient intercom mounted on a bulkhead squawked like an asthmatic parrot. “Chairman, it’s Linda.” Juan mashed the TALK button with the heel of his hand. “Go ahead, Linda.”

“I’m set up in the boardroom. Eric and Murph are here already. We’re just waiting for you, Max, and Julia.”

“Hux is with me,” Cabrillo said. “Last I saw Max, he was in his cabin, arguing with his ex-wife again.”

“I’ll send Eric to go get him. I’m ready anytime.”