“When?” she asked.
“It’s hard to say,” the noncom told her. “Definitely after we penetrated the facility, but…it honestly could have been anytime before we breached the final security layers. We’ll dig more, see if we can find anything, but I’m not hopeful.
“The cleanup job was very thorough. The only reason we have the POS treatment data is because the person doing this wanted us to have it.”
“Do we have enough to help?” she asked.
“I only took a surface skim of the data myself, but it looked like Lafrenz had a detailed treatment plan, not just experimental data. I’m no doctor, sir, but I think it’s exactly what they need to help those people.
“I think it’s more than we dared hope we had, even.”
But the actual data on the weapon was gone. Worse, the data on the Orpheus Project and the people behind it was gone.
“Are you certain the data was copied before it was destroyed?” Roslyn asked. “Someone took this with them?”
“One hundred percent,” Trevis confirmed. “They were good, but we have full hardware access. I can tell that several petabytes of data were transferred out of the system from the console we suspect was used.”
“Damn.” She shook her head. “That’s not what I was hoping to hear, Chief. Any other bad news?”
“There was a fail-safe magnetic burn system installed on the sample-storage facility,” Trevis told her. “We couldn’t even find the damn storage until we broke the final security layer, but someone activated the fail-safe.
“From the video I’m getting of the storage unit, they had samples of forty-six different iterations of the nanite. All have been destroyed.”
“I can live with that, to be honest,” Roslyn admitted. “Our orders were to destroy any existing samples once we were certain we could treat the victims anyway.”
“Can’t argue with the logic, sir,” Trevis said. “The test-subject records are bad enough.”
“We’ll want to make sure the Guardia gets those, too,” she told him. “We can at least give the poor victims’ families some closure.”
“I will, sir,” he promised. “What now, sir?”
“Finish up down there,” Roslyn ordered. “Make sure you’ve cleaned out their main databases and that there aren’t any personal wrist-comps or datapads floating around. My understanding is that our tour of duty isn’t being adjusted, so we’ll be here for a while.
“If we’ve got what we need to help the victims, the rush is over. Take the time to do it right.”
Guerra, Daalman and Kristofferson looked disappointed but…unsurprised.
“I was expecting these meshuggener to have set something up to destroy their data,” the XO said once Roslyn had completed her report.
Huntress’s three officers were in Daalman’s office, with the Cardinal-Governor’s image taking up an entire wall as the old priest listened to them.
“That someone has copied it is disturbing,” Guerra noted. “God will judge the people who built the weapon—Commander Chambers has seen to that—but I will admit I had prayed it would not leave my world.
“I fear we are now too late to guarantee that.”
“Unfortunately, Your Excellency, you are correct,” Roslyn told him. “With the level of chaos in Nueva Portugal and the wide options for exiting the Project Orpheus facility, we have no way of identifying who left the base with the data.
“While there has been limited traffic off of Sorprendidas since then, there is no way we can do anything to prevent the data leaving the planet.”
“Are we certain of that?” Guerra asked. “It seems that such a threat would justify significant searches of outgoing shuttles and vessels.”
“It wouldn’t help,” Daalman admitted. “Between your local resources and the RMN ships arriving tomorrow and later, we could search every single ship leaving Sorprendidas. But we could dismantle them and still never find the data on a ship carrying it.
“Hiding a data storage device is simply too easy. I’m tempted to make the effort regardless, Your Excellency, but I can see no value in it.”
“God willing, it has fallen into the hands of someone who will destroy it,” Guerra said. “We believe they are also the one who made the post-Orpheus treatment plan easily found?”
“We only have evidence of one person penetrating the facility other than us,” Roslyn agreed. “They were definitely a Mage and definitely hostile to both Orpheus and us. But they also clearly felt a moral responsibility to make sure that data was in our hands.
“A moral responsibility I do not believe anyone from Project Orpheus would feel.”
“They are demons, lost to the sight of God,” Guerra ground out. “I pray that His wisdom guides the Navy to them sooner rather than later.”
“We will be watching,” Daalman promised. “The data and its thieves will not escape forever.”
“So I pray.” Guerra sighed. “In all this disaster, your ship and your people—especially Commander Chambers—have been present and willing to help.
“Thank you.”
Unspoken was that the Cardinal-Governor probably didn’t think he’d have received the same level of help from the Republican Interstellar Navy—if the RIN had even had a ship in Sorprendidas.
Even with the Promethean Interfaces and their murdered Mage brains, the RIN had never had enough ships to worry about local security.
“That is the mission we were sent here to carry out,” Daalman told the Governor. “We are tasked with honoring Her Majesty’s Protectorate. You are under the protection of Mars. That means something more and greater than merely being part of a nation. It means that we—that someone from Mars—will be here when you need it.
“That is Her Majesty’s oath, the promise that underlines everything that defines the nation we serve, Governor Guerra,” the Mage-Captain said. “Whatever you need, if we can provide it, we will.”
“Thank you, Mage-Captain.” Guerra shook his head. “A few weeks ago, even, I would have regarded those as fancy words meant to soothe the raised hackles of former secessionists. Today… Today I recognize them as God’s own truth.
“And I thank you.”
The wallscreen dimmed to darkness and Daalman exhaled a long sigh.
“I would love to believe that Project Orpheus was just this one lab,” he said quietly.
