“Like they’re infectious,” Roslyn agreed. “Where are we at?”
“The Army is solidifying the quarantine lines in the mountains. They’re trying to pull Guardia in from the rest of the peninsula to lock in the city, but I don’t give that more than a fifty-fifty chance of being in time,” Bolivar admitted. “Your Captain has used your authority to impose a planetary quarantine and ordered all spacecraft to dock at the orbital. No further contact between orbit and surface; no one allowed to leave at all.”
“Good. I’m calling upstairs,” Roslyn told him, “but we need to start moving toward the school.”
“The school?” Bolivar sounded confused.
“There are thousands of people near here who have not yet been exposed, and we’re sitting on top of the largest biologically sealed safe zone on the planet,” Roslyn said. “We have to start funneling people into the lab, and that school is the closest concentration of people—and kids.”
“And the lab will keep them safe,” he agreed. “Maybe. Fuck.”
“It’s a better chance than doing nothing,” she told him. It was a terrible idea. But it was the only way she could see to keep the nearby children safe. “Get them moving while I call home.”
The Guardia officer nodded and took off at a run. She couldn’t give him much hope, but it was enough to break his paralysis.
If only someone could lift Roslyn’s fears so easily.
“Marines, I’m going into conference; cover me,” she ordered. The two exosuits shifted toward her wordlessly as she tapped commands on her wrist-comp and took a seat in the passenger seat of the van.
Her view of the world in front of her vanished as her helmet locked in to full conference mode. A moment later, the image of Song of the Huntress’s bridge appeared around her.
“Lieutenant Commander, you’re alive,” Mage-Captain Daalman greeted her. “And apparently promoted?”
“I was given a Warrant in case something like this happened, sir,” Roslyn told her boss. “I was always hunting a rogue Prometheus lab. We just didn’t expect this.”
“I got the gist of it, I think, from the Guardia Captain, but what the hell is going on, Chambers?” Daalman demanded.
“The Mages working for the Republic set up a secret lab to work on nano-scale magitech based on the Prometheus Interface,” Roslyn said, summarizing as quickly as she could. “They developed a weapon they called Orpheus, a magitech nanite that codes microscopic runes inside the human body to take control of the body away from the brain—an inversion of the Prometheus Interface.
“The version they put in the bomb was non-replicating. The version they’re deploying now is self-replicating. It is infectious and I’m not sure of the vectors. I’ve got people in the lab working on getting into their data, but I also have the locations of the aerosol sprayers deploying the nanites.
“Transmitting now.”
“Anyone I send down to the surface to deal with those has to go into full quarantine,” Daalman said quietly. “No external air, no surface contact, but I still can’t let them back aboard Huntress.”
She paused.
“I’ll ask for volunteers from the Marines. Those sprayers will be down in five minutes. Stay on this channel, Chambers.”
Daalman disappeared and Roslyn had a view of the outside world for a few moments. She forced herself to breathe steadily, trying to calm her emotions as much as possible to allow her to work.
An entire city was at risk now. She wasn’t so naïve as to think she was responsible for what Lafrenz had done, but she was still going to do everything she could to stop it.
When the conference mode resumed, Daalman wasn’t alone. A man in the formal red robes of a Catholic Cardinal sitting behind a large stone desk filled half of her view now as the helmet split-screened a three-way conference.
“Cardinal Guerra,” she greeted the planetary Governor. She’d only seen file footage of Fulvio Guerra, which had clearly either been taken longer ago than she’d thought or been doctored. Guerra was one of the oldest-looking human beings she’d ever seen, with deep lines carved into his face and thin but neatly cropped white hair.
“Envoy Chambers,” Guerra greeted her, extending the traditional title of a Voice holding a Warrant. “You’ll forgive me for being frustrated. We did not expect to be surprised by one of Her Majesty’s Voices.”
“The intent, Cardinal, was that I never use the Warrant and carry out the investigation of the Orpheus lab as a Navy officer on a classified basis,” Roslyn told the old man. “That is no longer an option. Nor is keeping any of this secret.”
“What are we facing, Envoy?”
“A self-replicating infectious nanoweapon,” she said simply. “It takes over control of the nervous system of the victim and triggers a massively violent response.” She sighed. “Evidence from the original quarantine zone suggests there’s some level of programming that results in them not attacking each other, but the victims do not eat…sleep…anything.
“They will attack everyone they find until they either can no longer find victims, or the lack of normal bodily maintenance kills them,” Roslyn concluded. “It is…possible that the Orpheus nanites may be able to sustain activity even in a dead host for some unknown period of time.”
“Zombies.”
The Cardinal’s single word hung in the air like a dangling sword.
“In the original Haitian sense, unquestionably,” she admitted. “But…like those original Haitian zombies, the infected are innocent. They haven’t chosen any of this. They are as much victims as anyone.”
“I understand.” All three of them were silent.
“We have elevated the quarantine of the Nueva Portugal peninsula to the maximum level,” Guerra told them. “That requires all interaction with potential infected to be handled by remote drone and a hundred-meter clear zone between the quarantine line and quarantinees…maintained by lethal force.”
“I…” Roslyn swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth. “I’m sorry, Cardinal-Governor, but I cannot disagree with your logic. You have the full support of the Warrant I bear in these choices.”
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the other half of the quarantine, Governor,” Daalman noted
