Roslyn stood back from the slowly moving crowds, using the Guardia network and the overhead from Huntress to try to estimate the spread of the infection. So far, it looked like the park was safe, which meant the lab was definitely safe.
But the more people they got underground, the better.
“Abiodun, what does Huntress have aboard in terms of filter systems?” she asked the destroyer’s logistics officer. “We should have some stuff for emergency epidemic aid, right?”
“I think so,” Lieutenant Commander Jamshed Abiodun told her. “I’m not sure we have anything rated for weaponized nanotech. I mean…what kind of monster even builds that?”
“The kind that worked for Project Prometheus,” Roslyn told him. “You have the map of the facility, right? I can forward it if you don’t.”
“A partial one, anyway,” Abiodun confirmed. “I’m guessing that’s all we’ve got?”
“Yeah. I’m thinking about that tunnel, though,” she said. “It’s most of a klick long and large enough for heavy vehicles. If we put a refugee camp in there, it isn’t going to be comfortable, but if we seal the entrance with our filtration systems, that should let us put at least another couple thousand people somewhere safe.”
For now was unspoken. Roslyn wasn’t even sure how she was going to feed everyone they were stuffing into the Orpheus lab. But every person she got onto the other side of their filters was someone who wasn’t at risk of being turned into a murderous killing machine.
“I’m checking the manifests now, and we’ve got the setups for two temporary class six biohazard containment facilities,” the other Navy officer told her. “They’re supposed to be set up as prefab buildings, but I think you can use the walls as a blockade and get the filters running.”
“Even if we can’t, they’re not going to be any use sitting in Huntress’s storage holds,” she said. “Can you get them down here?”
“They’re designed for air drop. I’ll have to check with the pilots we’ve got left, but I think we can get them into a hundred-meter target zone from thirty klicks up,” he said. “If you can mark out that kind of zone, I can send them down.”
He paused.
“We’ve got a few air-drop supply capsules designed for that,” he noted. “I’m guessing a couple dozen thousand ration packs wouldn’t go unused, either?”
Protectorate emergency ration packs were wonders of modern nutrition technology, providing the protein, nutrients and minimum hydration a human needed for a day in a reasonably tasty, if unappetizingly goopy, package.
“I can hope this won’t last long enough for us to need more than that,” she agreed. “So far as I can tell, our biohazard suits are safe, but once the nanites reach here, anyone outside won’t be able to go in the safe zone.
“So, drop whatever you can, Jamshed,” she said. “It might make all the difference.”
“Already got people loading the shuttles,” he promised. “Get us that drop zone and we’ll get you the decon and filtration gear for the sites immediately. We’ll sequence food and whatever else we can dig out of the holds until we run out of drop pods…or time.”
“Thank you,” Roslyn said. “It will save lives.”
“What use is Her Majesty’s Protectorate if we don’t protect people, Chambers?” he asked. “We’ll do what we can.”
Organizing a clear safe zone for the drop pods to come down was a relief from watching the overall state of Nueva Portugal, but it only occupied a few minutes of Roslyn’s time—and she had to delegate someone else to watch the slow descent of a city of two million souls into madness.
That someone was Victoriano Bolivar, and even through full coverage body armor, he seemed ill when Roslyn returned to him.
“We’ve got the biohazard gear and food supplies coming in,” she reassured him. “We should be able to get it all set up before…”
He shook his head.
“Bolivar?”
“The spread is accelerating,” he told her, his voice dead. “I don’t even have Guardia contact in a third of the city anymore. We’ve lost control. What’s left of the Guardia is falling back on us here, but…even that’s a risk.”
“I know,” she said. “But we don’t have anywhere else to send them.”
“We don’t have space for the uninfected,” Bolivar reminded her. “And…we can’t tell the difference until they snap. I just watched a precinct station of thirty officers go dark after one person they’d hauled in earlier as a drunk snapped.
“Everyone in the cell block was infected and started snapping as well…including the officers guarding them. It’s a nightmare, Chambers. What do we do?”
“I don’t know,” Roslyn admitted. “We get as many people to safety as we can and protect them.”
She brought up the map of the city and grimaced, glad no one could see her face behind the armor. As Bolivar had said, entire sections of the city—everything within ten kilometers, at least, of the aerosol sprayers—were now only showing data coming in from Huntress above.
There were still potentially uninfected people in those areas, but how were they supposed to find them?
“Assuming this version works like the previous version, anyone we can scan with bioscanners is going to dissolve the nanites,” she said slowly. “That’s the only protection we’ve got. We’re going to have to start scanning everyone we send down soon.”
“Now, I suggest,” Bolivar told her. “It’s the only tool we’ve got.”
Roslyn gestured at the crowd still filtering through the park toward the Orpheus lab.
“Scanning them all is going to slow this down to the point where we’ll lose more,” she reminded him. “The decon chambers in the lab will kill it, theoretically. Andrews is supposed to be cycling everyone through those, whether they stay in the main lab or not.”
“And what happens if this one is tougher, less designed to be subtle?” the Guardia officer asked.
There was a hopelessness
