“I expect him to make that call in the next ten minutes. You, Lieutenant Commander Chambers, are not going to be in there overnight or while the Planetary Army storms the quarantine zone.
“This is not a discretionary order.”
“They almost seem to be drawn to each other, like there’s a marshaling order in their heads telling them to attack the perimeter en masse.”
Knight’s voice sounded more sick than analytical as she watched the display with Roslyn. The deaths of dozens of the affected as they’d rushed one section of the perimeter appeared to have rippled through the remaining people in the quarantine zone.
Now the park to the north of them had been filled with a cluster of at least five thousand people, all making an awful keening noise that tore at Roslyn’s ears and sanity alike.
“Clear the landing pad,” Herbert told them over the radio channel. “I am coming in.”
“Pad is clear,” Mooren replied, letting Roslyn continue to look at the holographic display and wallow in her guilt.
The sound of the shuttle descending finally cut off the horrific keening of the victims of her mistake.
“There it is,” Knight suddenly said.
“There what is?” Roslyn asked.
“The Cardinal-Governor’s orders. He’s going on air in ten minutes, but the first wave of orders just went out: the entire peninsula is being quarantined until further notice. Units of the Sorprendidas Planetary Army are moving in by helicopter to secure the roads and ports.”
“Makes sense,” Roslyn said grimly. She looked over at Killough. “Any clear sign in those medical reports?”
“No,” the MISS agent replied. “I’d say whatever it was dissolved underneath medical examination. So, standard bioscans should be a treatment, but…getting people into them would be almost impossible.”
“That’s disturbing,” she said. She stepped away from the hologram as the shuttle touched down behind them, looking up the road to the park she knew was full of rabid innocents.
“If we could disable them somehow, it would be an option,” she said. “But…SmartDarts only knock them down. Nix gasses do nothing. It might fade in a day or two, but…there’s enough innocents in the quarantine zone that I doubt the Governor is going to risk it.”
“The only thing I’m seeing out of the ordinary is silver carbonate,” Killough told her. “The quantity is…nothing, but it shouldn’t be there at all.”
Roslyn blinked.
“That’s what we make runes out of, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not quite,” Killough said. “It’s a decay product when the polymer breaks down. You would have silver carbonate in your bloodstream at a slightly higher level than this, but you have Jump Mage runes that your body is trying to metabolize.
“This girl has no runes, and silver carbonate isn’t something that most people encounter.”
“It’s something for the quarantine line to look for, at least,” Roslyn told him. “Let’s keep it in mind. For now.” She gestured to the shuttle.
“It’s time for us to go.”
20
The new destroyers had enough space that Mage-Captain Daalman had been able to set aside a section next to the shuttle bay to act as a temporary quarantine zone. Medtechs in full-body hazmat suits guided Roslyn and her team into the designated rooms.
“How long?” she asked Dr. Breda, once she’d managed to identify the squat woman amidst the support staff.
“Well, the good news is that it doesn’t seem to be contagious,” Breda told her. “Certainly, there’s nothing coming through the class five biosuits.
“It also looks like about an eight-to-twelve-hour onset, so you’re probably already fine,” the doctor continued. “We’re going to keep you quarantined for twenty-four hours just in case.”
“What’s the Cardinal-Governor ordering?” Roslyn asked.
“No one is leaving New Portugal for two weeks,” the Navy doctor replied. “I believe we’re providing sensor support as well as medical aid as needed.”
“I see the planetary Governor likes us better than the regional one did.”
“Not really,” a new voice interrupted. Roslyn looked around to see Mage-Captain Daalman, identifiable by her height even in a class five biosuit. “Cardinal-Governor Fulvio Guerra is just more desperate than his local subordinate.
“He did, after all, just have to order the death or internment of thousands of his citizens to save tens of thousands,” Daalman said grimly. “Our Marines are going in. It’s…ugly.”
“I thought I saved them by teleporting the bomb,” Roslyn said quietly.
“If you hadn’t done what you did, several thousand people would have died in that moment,” her superior pointed out. “And then we would still have had to deal with this.
“I’ve had our systems people set up full access to our databases and scanners from the quarantine section, linked to your authority,” Daalman continued. “You and your…contact should be able to do whatever you need to do.
“Thank you, sir,” Roslyn replied. “I’m…surprised you still trust me.”
“You misjudged and charged in, but you also handled the result in the best way possible,” Daalman pointed out. The older woman shook her head. “I would have preferred you to put in the work to know there was a bomb, but I won’t pretend I see a better way to handle what you found.
“The blame sits on the murderous assholes who designed and deployed this goddamn modified rabies virus or…whatever it is,” she said. “Find them, Lieutenant Commander Chambers.
“We don’t execute people for much, but I’m going to enjoy watching these assholes swing. Find them for me,” she repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
Every piece of analysis they’d done on the surface was in Roslyn’s wrist-comp, easily fed into Song of the Huntress’s computers as Killough downloaded information from his own machine.
The Marines, finally stripped out of their bulky armor, left the tactical officer and the MISS agent alone with the computers. They seemed to focus on the showers that had thankfully been included in the quarantine quarters.
Roslyn, on the other hand, had panicked at the sight of the showers until she’d confirmed the water was being contained and not fed back into the ship’s main supply.
“The key that I found, shortly before everything went to hell
