“I could send out new drones to confirm that, sir.”
“Faced with a mass human wave attack by unarmed civilians, Sergeant, would you be prepared to guarantee they wouldn’t get within fifty meters?” Roslyn asked instead.
Colburn gave a tired sigh.
“In this circumstance, sir, our biggest problem is ammunition. Most of our arsenal will overpenetrate against that kind of…target,” he said carefully. “We tend to assume that we can neutralize unarmored opponents with Nix or SmartDarts.
“A human wave attack like the infected will launch… We only carry so many bullets, sir. And we can’t risk bringing the Marines into the park, can we?”
“No,” Roslyn agreed. “What we can do is set up a perimeter around the park. Blockade streets, funnel the infected. We have an hour, Sergeant. Even without bringing the shuttles within, let’s say, two hundred meters of the refugees, can we secure the area?”
“The infected may well just go over any barrier we build,” Colburn warned. “I’ve been watching them. We can’t funnel them on a large scale; they will go over instead of around. On a stack of bodies, if necessary.”
“But we can still hold a perimeter?”
“It’s a three-kilometer-wide park,” he noted. “Roughly square, so twelve kilometers of perimeter. If we bring all the Marines from Huntress and build the positions right…maybe.
“If nothing else, we can buy time. With exosuits for us and biohazard gear for Guardia volunteers, we can keep them a hundred meters from the civilians for a while. Maybe long enough.”
“If you have an answer for how long is enough, Sergeant, you’re ahead of me,” Roslyn told him. “Pull the shuttles back to the edge of the park. Leave drones orbiting over that mob; it’s our first threat.”
She shivered.
“I don’t want to order this, Sergeant,” she said quietly, “but if the only way I can save fifty thousand of this city’s people is to kill another fifty thousand…what choice do I have?”
“I don’t know, sir,” he admitted. “May I pray that we find that choice?”
“There’s Marines in the lab working on it,” Roslyn told him. “Pray away, Sergeant. If anyone can do the impossible, I trust in your Corps.”
41
“There has to be another way.”
Cardinal-Governor Guerra sounded exhausted. To be fair, Roslyn felt as bad as the planetary Governor sounded, and she stared past the image of Guerra’s face on her helmet to the crowd of refugees filling the park.
The prospect of killing tens of thousands of his citizens was still unacceptable to him—a damn good thing, in Roslyn’s opinion.
“I agree,” she told him. “I’ve got everyone I can spare trying to access the databases of the Orpheus lab and people tearing down a decontamination chamber we aren’t using to try to identify if it’s doing anything differently.
“If we can establish that the standard class six biohazard decontamination protocols can neutralize the nanites, then we can at least begin considering evacuating the not-actively infected portion of the population,” she continued. “Until we can establish that, though, the current quarantine has to remain in effect—and I’m not certain we’ll find a way to disable the Orpheus weapon in the people it’s already taken control of.”
“What can I do?” Guerra asked. “I am praying as hard as I can, but God acts through people.”
“We will forward everything we learn from the Orpheus facility,” she promised. “You have the resources of a planetary government. I have a handful of Marines and whatever engineers and techs ended up in my evacuation zone.
“Also.” She paused. There was something, but it was planning for a victory even she wasn’t sure she’d see.
“What, Envoy Chambers?”
Roslyn shivered at that title. She’d be happy to burn that fucking Warrant when this was all over.
“We know that even if we do manage to deactivate the nanites, the victims are badly injured afterward,” she told him. “The first version of the weapon we encountered was neutralized by standard bioscans, but the victims went into comas and lost autonomous system control.
“If we find any answer, we’re going to be facing tens to hundreds of thousands of people requiring immediate major medical attention, and there aren’t enough doctors in a city of two million to handle that.”
“Sorprendidas has some of the finest medical seminaries in the Protectorate,” Guerra told her. “We train priests from ten worlds to be doctors—and laymen from a dozen more. While we focus on the mental health and psychological well-being of God’s children, we also train many thousands of surgeons and general practitioners.
“Give me time, and I will have an army of doctors ready to handle anyone you can save, Commander Chambers,” he promised. “We will be ready when you need us. I presume your Captain Daalman has information on the symptoms and problems you’ve encountered?
“I hope—I pray—that we were already working on finding a treatment for this…post-Orpheus syndrome,” the priest said calmly. “But I assure you, we will have one. If you can save them.”
“I don’t know if I can, Your Excellency,” Roslyn admitted. “I have half a dozen chances to find a way, though. We have to have hope.”
“No, my child,” Guerra said quietly. “We have to have faith. In God, yes. But also in your Marines. In our fellow humans. I have faith in you.”
“I’m not Catholic, Cardinal, and I served in the war,” Roslyn told him. “I’m not sure how much faith I have in anything, let alone myself.”
“No one is perfect, Envoy Chambers. I will have enough faith in you for us both, then. You will find an answer.”
Roslyn swallowed, both touched and stunned by the quiet determination of the man in charge of Sorprendidas.
“I hope you’re right,” she said. “And I will do everything I can to make it right.”
A new icon blinked on her screen and she forced a smile.
“And there is the next call on my schedule,” she continued. “We’ll keep your people informed of everything we find, but
