All My Sins Remembered (14 page)

“Doc, just get to the point.” Nathan interrupted.  He could hear the scientist clearing his throat through the coms.

“Yes. Well.  I think this is Sarin
3.” Doctor Hirsch announced.  “The presence of the chemical has largely dissipated, but there are residual readings that has been detected in the soil.  If it is Sarin 3, that means these poor people died when their Pharynx muscles lost rigidity and they suffocated.”

“In English, Doc.” Nathan replied irritably.  Doctor Hirsch favored the Commander with an exasperated sigh.

“Their throats closed and they couldn’t breathe.  Most likely, they felt like they were choking on something, or drowning.” Doctor Hirsch explained.

“Let me know when your findings are conclusive, Doc.” Nathan said. 

“Well…that’s the thing.  In order to know for sure, I will need to examine the corpses, or at least one or two of them.”  Doctor Hirsch responded.  Nathan grunted as his eyes slid over to Dareem.  He knew that if Dareem and is family were Muslims, and their burial rituals could be quite specific.  He sensed potential trouble on the horizon.

“I’ll get back to you on that, Doc.  Do what you can until then.” Nathan responded, ending the conversation. 
Nathan made a quick report of Doctor Hirsch’s preliminary findings to Hawke before ordering his Marines to set up a perimeter around Misrati, setting them up inside of now empty homes on the edges of the village.  He wasn’t expecting trouble, but it had been his experience that you never knew.  Satisfied that the Marines were in position, Nathan turned once again towards Dareem.  He was stalling, he knew.  He really didn’t want to ask Dareem about having the Doc examine the corpses, but he knew it had to be done.  As he approached, Dareem stood up from the place he had been squatting on the ground and looked to Nathan expectantly.

“Dareem, our head scientist has requested that he be allowed to examine one or two of
the deceased.” Nathan said.  Dareem lowered his eyes in thought a moment before he nodded assent.

“I will take you to where they are buried, but they must be returned in the exact manner in which they were buried.” Dareem answered.  He seemed somewhat reluctant, which was understandable, given his beliefs and the fact that he had buried them all himself.  He led them to a hill about a half mile north of where they were, where several hundred fresh graves were dug.  Nathan noted a nearby digging machine with an arm that had a large scoop approximately four feet wide on its end, and surmised that Dareem had used that scoop as a way of quickly digging graves.  He wondered, not for the first time, how Dareem was able to cope with what could have only been a horrifyingly traumatic experience.  To have everyone in his entire life to be suddenly killed was no small thing. 

Near the digging machine, speared into a mound of rocky dirt, were a couple of shovels.  Grabbing one, Dareem walked over to a couple of graves, one smaller than the other, and began carefully digging.  When Doctor Hirsch signaled another scientist to grab the second shovel and begin digging at the smaller mound, Dareem stopped and ran towards the scientist, with his hand outstretched.

“No!” Dareem yelled. “
Please.  Do not.”  The Scientist paused, startled at the impassioned plea.  The Commander, who had been carefully watching Dareem since their arrival, and had noted the careful way he had begun digging at the first grave, suddenly understood what he was doing.  He couldn’t help but shake his head in disbelief.

“He won’t.” Nathan offered. “Perhaps you can tell us who else?  We need a woman, a child, and a man for complete analysis.”  Dareem gave the Commander a grateful look before his eyes wondered sadly across all of the newly buried graves, then stopped on a particular one.

“Does-“ Dareem stopped as he roughly cleared his throat and tried again. “Does it matter how old they are?”  Darting a quick look at the Doctor Hirsch, he saw the scientist shake his head almost imperceptivity.  The sad expression on the doctor’s face said that he understood the sacrifice Dareem was making.

“No.” Nathan replied. Dareem nodded once, and pointed to a grave in the last row farthest from them.  It was a grave that looked as if it was dug by hand, as were the two graves he was working on digging up himself.

“Jawdah is there.  He was the first I found, and the first I buried.  He was in the sunset of his life, with all the symptoms that accompanied it, but aside from that, he was in good health.”  Dareem explained.  After looking towards the doctor to make sure that this ‘Jawdah’ person would be acceptable, he nodded acceptance as the scientist originally tasked with exhuming Dareem’s Son was retasked to instead exhume Jawdah.  Nathan slid his faceplate down and sealed it into place as he watched Dareem a few moments more before turning to check on his perimeter.  Dareem was made of sterner stuff than he was, he had to admit.  How else can a man both bury and exhume his own family, all in the space of a week?  Not for the first time, Nathan wondered about Dareem’s state of mind.

“You’re not going to like this.” Doctor Hirsch reported the next day.  Nathan and Doctor Hirsch, along with the science team on the planet, had all returned to
The Fury
after taking extensive samples and performing what tests they could on the ground, leaving behind the three squads of Marines guarding the perimeter of Misrati, along with Dareem.  Now, Hawke, Nathan, and the doctor were all standing in the rather larger medical bay of
The Fury
.  Compared to the
Black Wave
, the medical bay was spacious, providing a full complement of medical facilities large enough to house several hundred individuals.  Off to the side, in stasis beds, lay the bodies of Isir, Aasif, and Jawdah, the three whom Dareem had offered to the Talons to be autopsied.

“I already don’t like it.” Hawke grumbled irritably, then asked, “What am I not going to like?”  Doctor Hirsch absently held up his hand, index finger extended in a gesture that peremptorily told Hawke to wait as he stared at what he saw in the holographic microscope display a few moments longer.  Then he blinked as if coming out of a trance, and shook his head.  Doctor Hirsch was a good man, but when it came to his work he had a one track mind.  When in the confines of his lab, he thought of his white lab coat as a bit of a cape, and he became the hero, much like Marines do on the battlefield.  In the trenches of science, Doctor Hirsch was the modern day equivalent of Stephen Hawking, or Albert Einstein.

“Ah, right. Well.” Doctor Hirsch began. “Well, you see we took a lot of samples of the adobe the houses are made of, the soil, even the air.” Hawke raised an eyebrow and idly wondered how you took samples of air.  He knew it made sense to those scientist types, but he could never quite get the rather humorous mental image of some scientist running around in an open field with a beaker and a stopper trying to bottle the air.  In spite of himself, Hawke let slip a grin while Doctor Hirsch continued to his report.  Thankfully, the good doctor was oblivious to it.

“And?”
Hawke prompted.

“There’s no doubt about it. Sarin-3 was the culprit of this massacre.  Dareem was right, they were murdered.”  Doctor Hirsch announced.  Hawke looked shocked, not sure what to say as his mindset was suddenly yanked from having to provide aid to plague victims to being right back in the middle of conducting his original mission.

“What? Are you sure?” Hawke asked, more to give him a few more moments to recover from the shock of the doctor’s announcement than out of any personal doubt as to whether or not the doctor was certain of his findings.  Doctor Hirsch was among the best in his field in several scientific disciplines, including chemistry.

“Of course I’m sure.” Doctor Hirsch answered, looking offended.  Hawke nodded and turned to look at Nathan, who looked troubled.

“A weapons test?” He asked.  Nathan thought for a moment, idly stroking his bearded chin, then shook his head .

“No.  A test of the gas would have been conducted differently.  For starters, any survivors would have been killed, not to mention that it would have occurred in an area no one cared about.”  Nathan answered.

“I don’t know, Daroon is pretty remote, and of the settlements on Daroon, Misrati is probably one of the most remote ones.” Hawke said, supplying a counterpoint to Nathan’s response.  It was one of the dynamics that made them such a good team.

“But there is still a matter of a survivor.” Nathan argued.  Hawke
had to admit that Nathan had  a point.  If this was truly a weapons test, they would have had plenty of surveillance, and a survivor would have been easily detected.

“Okay, I’ll grant you that.  They would have sent forces in while the gas was still airborne to kill
any survivors, and then cleaned up after themselves.”  Hawke allowed.  “So what are we dealing with?"  Nathan shrugged, indicating he had no answer.

“A spill.”  Mumbled Doctor Hirsch as he absently typed something in on his data pad and seemed to be studying whatever it was that was displayed on the screen.  Hawke looked startled as he looked at the doctor.

“A what?” Hawke asked, surprised he had almost forgotten the Doctor was there.  The doctor looked up and blinked a couple of times, as if he hadn’t realized he had said it out loud.

“A spill.”  Doctor Hirsch repeated.  “Sarin-3, in its native form, is a liquid.  It allows for easier transport and distribution, but it has a low flash point, which means that in an environment like Daroon, if it leaked and formed a puddle, it would begin the vaporization shortly after sunrise.
  The winds would have carried that vapor quite a ways, though it would decrease in potency the further it went.  It just so happened that Mistrati was the nearest town exposed to the vapor.”  The doctor’s voice took on a lecturing tone, and Hawke inwardly grimaced, but endured what he was sure to be a lengthy explanation.  Any information about Sarin-3 might help him figure out just what was going on.  Doctor Hirsch, meanwhile, had projected the now familiar molecular structure of Sarin-3, the descendant to the original Sarin gas, now commonly called Sarin-1, developed on old earth over a thousand years ago.

“The facts are consistent.” Doctor Hirsch explained.  “According to Dareem’s statement, he arrived at nearly mid day, and the villagers were already dead.  Considering the fact that Daroon has a
twenty-six hour solar cycle rather than ancient earth’s standard twenty-four hour solar cycle, and also considering the fact that the wind was traveling almost in a straight north-south path…which is strange in and of itself…I’d love to study why the wind-“ The doctor began feverishly typing on his datapad, obviously caught up in another thought.

“Doctor!” Hawke interrupted.  Doctor Hirsh looked up, surprised.

“What?” He said, seeming to have forgotten everything he had just said previously regarding the spill.

“The Sarin-3 spill?” Hawke prompted.

“Oh, right…the origin of the spill is about thirty two kilometers north.” The Doctor replied absently as he waved towards a simple two dimensional topographical map displayed on a screen behind him on the wall. “That just doesn’t…why does the wind…” Hawke sighed, realizing he had lost the doctor to the mysteries of the wind, and glanced at the map.  The proposed origin of the Sarin-3 gas was actually highlighted as a circular area of three kilometers.  Hawke smiled, suddenly thankful that, as part of newly completed renovations to
The Fury
they had removed electronic countermeasures and electronic counter-countermeasure equipment for sensor boosters that provided higher resolution surface scans as well as multiple sensor modes.  With them, they could scan the area, and perhaps provide clues that would pinpoint the production facility, especially since such a facility would likely be well guarded.

“Looks like we will need to find out where
this came from.” Hawke said with a smile.  Nathan nodded in agreement.

“And when we do, we blow that place to kingdom come.” Nathan added grimly as he followed Hawke out of the medical bay.

“Wait!” Doctor Hirsch called out urgently, arresting their exit, seeming to realize for the first time what Nathan and Hawke were saying.  “You cannot destroy it from orbit.”  Nathan looked a bit irritated.

“Why not?” asked Nathan.
  The doctor sighed, slightly exasperated by their lack of understanding.

“
You Marines and your incessant need to blow things up!” the Doc said to the ceiling in an exasperated tone of voice, then sighed as he leveled his gaze once again on Nathan.  “Sarin-3 has a low flashpoint, remember?” The Doctor reminded them.  “If you just blow it up from orbit, or march your Marines in and blow the place off the planet, you may very well kill half of the people on the planet along with it as the Sarin-3 vaporized!”  Hawke felt stupid.  He should have realized that.  Nathan looked a little sheepish as well.

“
Right.  Of course.  So that means we’ll have to send in the Marines, avoid containment breach while simultaneously taking the production facility, and then have your science teams come down to dispose of it safely.”  Hawke supplied.  Doctor Hirsch nodded in agreement.

“Quite.” Doctor Hirsch said in agreement.  “And make sure your Marines stay in the safe
ty of their power armor.  Since it is environmentally sealed, they are protected from any affects of Sarin-3 exposure, unless their armor gets holes in it.”  Hawke gave the doctor a strange look, then met Nathan’s equally baffled stare for a moment before turning back around to leave the lab. 

“He does know that armor tends to get holes in them, right?” Nathan asked under his breath as he followed Hawke out.  Hawke just shook his head, allowing himself a silent chuckle.  Leave it to the Doc to ask the impo
ssible.

***

A few short hours later found Hawke and Nathan were in the officer’s briefing room on board
The Fury
, joined by Captain Elena Yost of
The Fury
, and Major Kinny, who had come with the Marine reinforcements on
The
Fury.  In place of seats, holoprojectors had been set up so that both Second Lieutenant Raijan Kemai, and Lieutenant Commander James Gordon could join in on the briefing.  Raijan had since replaced Commander Schultz as the commander on the ground, while Gordy was on board
The Black Wave
.  The table in
The Fury’s
briefing room was oval, with an open center in which sat a holographic projector several orders of magnitude larger than the small projector planted in the middle of the table on
The Black Wave
.  Everyone’s attention was glued to the holographic image suspended in the air in front of them, which was the result of both sensor readings, scout drones, and through a process called virtualized extrapolation wherein certain parts of the structure they weren’t able to get any intel on was extrapolated based on the architectural and structural data they had managed to obtain.  The floor plans on the lower floors had been entirely extrapolated because the probes were destroyed before they could complete their entire surveillance run.  After a few more moments of silence, Colonel Bakore cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention to him.

“As you can see, the facility is larger than expected, with barracks and living quarters taking up the top floor, labs on the
second floor, and production facilities taking up the third and fourth floors.” Hawke informed them.  Using the touch screen in front of him, he commanded the image to zoom in on the bottom two floors, and converted the holographic image to a wireframe.  The bottom floor looked to house a large central room bordered by hallways that made a square around the central room, with offices and other rooms connected to the hallway.

“We don’t know too much about these two floors, as a majority of both these floors were extrapolated, but we do know that the central area spans both floors.  There’s stairs and a balcony that
surrounds the upper floor of the central room, and offices and perhaps a control room that opens out onto the balcony. “ Moving on, Hawke pointed to the hallways on both floors.

“Both floors have a hallway that runs around the central room, with rooms t
hat open out into the hallway.  There are two elevators on the north wall, and in the northwest corner is the central stairway.  The central room is where the tank farm will be.  We believe that is where they are storing all of their Sarin, because there are two air locks that control access to the central room, as well as large venting mechanisms made for sucking out any contamination within the room into large tanks held in this sealed room to the south, off the hallway, accessible only by a single airlock.  It is Doctor Hirsch’s belief that this is their failsafe.” Hawke explained.  “Our task is to secure the production facility quickly and efficiently, and to hold it as our science team lands and begins to safely dispose of all product. Upon extraction,
The Fury
will destroy the facility from orbit, rendering it inoperable.”  Hawke looked around the table at each officer, briefly meeting the eyes of each who were looking at him rather than at the holographic image.

“To that end, I am open to suggestions on how to accomplish these objectives as quickly as possible, with the minimum of bloodshed.”  Hawke finished.  He sat back in his chair, fingers pressed together to form a steeple in front of him as he waited.  After a few moments, Nathan manipulated his own touch screen, brining the focus to the top floor, and entrance to the subterranean structure.
  It showed the observed routes of perimeter patrols on the surface, as well as a guard shack sitting just outside the entrance where large trucks gain entrance to the facility.

“Well, it looks like there’s only one way to get in, and that’s through the front door.  The ventilation shafts have laser grids to prevent intrusion that way.  That tells me a night insertion is likely to be our best bet, since that is when the enemy is least alert and responsive, two or three hours before dawn.”  Nathan said, beginning the discussion.  Raijan’s holographic head nodded in agreement.

“We can perform an insertion using our hover transports.  With their stealth features, we can drop the whole platoon a mere half kilometer away, perhaps closer, and they can go in from there.”  Raijan suggested.  Across the table, sitting to the left of Captain Yost, Major Kinny shook his head in disagreement.  He was the commander of the company of Marine aboard
The Fury,
and technically commanded the Marines aboard
The Black Wave
as he was the highest Ranking Marine between the two ships, second only to Colonel Bakore and Commander Schultz, who also held the Marine rank of Lieutenant Colonel as required by the regulations of the PMC Accord.  Hawke waved a hand towards the Major to indicate that he should speak up.