Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (65 page)

The admiral went around to administer the second level
initialization to each volunteer. When he was finished he went back to work.

...*...*...*...*...

Doctor Zane came into the virology lab and smiled at nurse Joy.
The small woman had her blue hazmat suit on like everyone else of course, he
could just image how her long pigtails were holding up in that helmet though.

Doctor La Plaz was off to one side, in front of a box gesturing
wildly. He could hear the young man muttering darkly as he worked. Doctor
Hadjiri was doing much the same thing behind him.

“Can I help you with something Ted?” Helen asked, standing in
front of a microscope, gesturing at seemingly nothing.

“Just wondering if you're still alive boss lady,” he teased,
coming over. “What are you working on?” he asked.

“Feline leukemia virus. It's a ticking time bomb about to go off.
Hank reported that it is starting to hit the Neo cat population.”

“Shit,” he said, and then looked away. After a moment he looked
back and nodded to the box with cables and cylinders attached to it. “What is
that? How's it helping?”

“This is a microscope,” Helen replied, looking at the box.

“With no viewfinder?” he asked, clearly amused. He studied the
light gray piece of equipment. He traced cables, some he was sure were for
power, though he didn't understand why a microscope needed power. Also the
cylinder shapes didn't make sense. He could see what looked like a loading tray
though, some bulges stacked on top that he assumed were lenses, but no viewing
scope.

“Don't need one, come here,” she said waving. She stepped to one
side. “Put your right hand here and initiate it,” she said, pointing to a gold
hand marker on the top of the machine.

He came closer and put his hand up. “It's I mean, I'm wearing
gloves.”

“Remember the Wi-Fi?” Helen asked. “No need to jack in, no need to
break protocol,” she said.

“Oh.” his hand dropped to within a centimeter of the gold hand
symbol. He blinked, stepping back hastily. “Wow!” He could literally see the
virus, whatever she was working on. As he moved it moved.

“Yeah, cool huh?” Helen asked, smiling. He looked at her. As soon
as he turned away his vision returned to normal.

“Now I see why we needed so many implants,” Ted murmured.

“Yes.”

“Why the um, gestures?” he asked.

She glanced at the others. Each seemed to be doing their own form
of dance. She snorted. “It's the waldos and nanites. They can be controlled by
telepresence,” she said. “See, the cameras in the microscope are all over. So
you can rotate the image,” she rotated her hands to show him. “And see it from
all angles. And if you want to control a bot, you access one, then use your
hands to tell it what to do.” She mimed picking up a container, unscrewing a
lid, then pouring out the contents.

Slowly Zane nodded. “And this is working?”

“Working damn well actually,” Helen replied. “Though it's
exhausting,” she said. “What's up?”

“Irons is. He's working on a plan to relocate to Hazard.”

Helen nodded. She wished she could wipe at her sweaty face.
Instead she kicked the fan up a little more. “I told him to. We need live
specimens to get the vaccines right. The data from Ivanov is helping but we
could do it a lot faster if we were there on the scene. We've already burned
through half of what he's sent us.”

“Half?”

“Half,” she smiled a weary smile. Her eyes were red and bloodshot.
“And it's not easy. But we're getting the job done,” she blew out a long
breath. “Now that we've got the steps ironed out the hardest part is testing.
Testing it and refining it is what's taking the longest. But fortunately we can
set one test up and then work on another culture while the first test runs its
course.”

“We're working on that Helen. I'm getting some weird queries about
why we need so many mice? Can we use rats? Sewers have them in plenty,” he said
wrinkling his nose.

“As long as they're alive yes,” Helen said. “We'll have to make
sure they are all humanely euthanized later,” she said firmly.

“Like we're going to put them back,” Zane snorted.

“Damn straight we're not. Besides, they'd probably be replaced in
under a day,” she sighed. “If that's what it takes, it's what it takes,” she
replied with a shrug. She looked at one of the other nurses who had secured a
mouse and was whispering to it as she used a robotic arm to inject it with a
serum. Helen didn't wince but Zane did.

“Okay.”

“Anything else?” she asked, crossing her arms.

“Yeah, read your e-mail. I've sent you, I dunno four? You stopped
responding.”

“I'm sort of in the middle of something,” she sighed. “Problems?”

“The usual shit, different day for the most part. Osiris is being
an ass, and so are the Malcolm brothers. They are trying to move for a meeting
to have you impeached from office.”

Helen snorted as the others in the lab paused what they were doing
to look at Zane in shock. She shrugged and waved for them to go back to work.
“Tell both of them to get back to work and stop playing politics. We've got
more important things to be doing now,” she growled.

“Part of the problem is the Hazard move. Malcolm Innes isn't happy
about it.”

“Tough,” Helen replied, turning so he could see her stern look and
set jaw. “We're going as soon as this round is finished. I'll sleep on the
plane. I'm sending the admiral ahead of us as soon as he can take the time.”

“Okay,” Zane replied, shrugging.

“Go on then, get. I've got this,” she said, returning to the
microscope. Zane nodded, stepping back to watch her for a moment, then turned
and left. It would take a while to get through decontamination before he could
unsuit and get back to the main hospital wing.

...*...*...*...*...

Now that Ted Zane had been initialized into the system, he now saw
the Wi-Fi network in a new light. Before it had been a toy, a way to goose
Helen and pass notes or information. Little more than a child's toy, something
they had done in class as kids.

Now though, a whole realm of possibilities were opening up. Whenever
he was near a piece of electronics with a link he could now see or 'hear' it.
He could link with it, and sometimes accidentally did. He was rebuffed twice by
the admiral's AI, he wondered what she was doing. Feeling that cold AI touch
him had also been an experience.

Yes, things were changing. Hopefully for the better.

...*...*...*...*...

Hank's fifth drone was sent to thread the needle, but this time
from a new direction. The drone re-oriented according to the prevailing winds
and then headed in against the headwind. Nanites were immediately detected by
the little drone. It had been designed to be more resistant to them. The first
nanites were recon bugs, but others were also in the air.

They managed to isolate samples of the nanites. As they got closer,
before the nanites reacted and crashed the drone.

Analyzing the samples, they discovered that some were a viral
nanotech, most likely controlled by a central host strain. “The good news is
that it's not targeting RNA and plant structures so they're safe. From what
we've been able to tell of this thing it's going after oxygen based life
forms.”

“Which is smart, most of us are oxy based.”

“Not all sentients are. But you have a point. Any differentiating
methods? Is it ruling out non sapient life?”

“No. It's just ignoring them for now.”

“Oh? Maybe we can use that?”

“How so?”

“I have no idea.”

...*...*...*...*...

Using the cell towers Hank had set up in Hazard, Sprite began to
pick up strange anomalous data. She ran it through her filters and it came back
as encrypted Xeno, possibly AI coding language. She suspected that the first
virus was a cover to something else. The panic made people run away spreading
the disease and also clearing the area of ground zero letting whatever was left
behind alone in relative peace and security. She reported her findings to
admiral Irons.

The admiral called a meeting to discuss the ramifications of that
news. Helen was there, as was Hank and Phoenix, though the latter two attended
virtually. He'd left most of the rest of the people out because he didn't want
or need a panic. The people were scared enough as it was. “This goes a bit
beyond a biological attack,” Irons said, looking at the AI.

Sprite posted the image of the code, and the direction. The cell
towers weren't designed to get a location on a transmission, but she'd managed
to get a rough estimate by triangulating the direction and signal strength each
tower was receiving. A map window appeared, a dot blinked on Rubicon town.

“Wonderful,” Irons murmured, rubbing his chin. “So there's
definitely something going on.”

“Which explains why we can't get a drone in to get a good look.
Anything that drops below a thousand meters has problems.” Hank's last drone
hadn't lasted long despite the anti-nanite coating.

“I thought we ruled that as mechanical failure?” Helen asked. The
AI shook her head.

“I can understand one, both were hastily made, but six? Each of
them were made in a replicator. Or at least their parts were. All were proven
designs, designs selected for how sturdy they were. All worked fine until they
got to Rubicon, where they then failed. Six aircraft, made with three different
designs failed on the same mission under the same circumstances at the same
location,” she said.

“You are thinking enemy action,” Irons said.

“Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, but three times is
enemy action. We already know the attack itself is enemy action. It's not a
strong leap to this admiral.”

“But we don't have any supporting evidence,” Irons murmured.

“I haven't had the time to analyze the telemetry if that is what
you are asking about admiral,” Sprite replied with a frown. “I've been busy,”
she said tartly.

The admiral nodded.

“Phoenix has checked into it, the AI has ruled out the most common
known mechanical failures. Phoenix also found a code string in the last
telemetry feed his probe sent before it dived and crashed.”

“Telemetry...”

“You'll remember when we started having control issues you ordered
the drone to get what it could. The bandwidth was hogged by the science package,
it was full of raw data. But there was some spill over, and what we thought was
corruption was, but it was corrupted with telemetry from the bird as its
software was being overwritten.”

“Shit,” Irons frowned.

“I'm missing something,” Helen said, looking from the screen to
the admiral and back. “Overwritten?”

“Something got into the bird's software. It programmed the drone
to crash.”

“Oh. Can it do that?”

“Apparently yes. So it recognized both probes as a threat and
acted on it.”

“Shit.”

...*...*...*...*...

Panic over the news that nanites were also involved spread through
the media. The admiral swore, they needed to keep a lid on people but
unfortunately people were just reacting, the stress was too much.

Already there were demands to use stern sterilization methods.

He was called in to a virtual meeting with Mr. Osiris. “We need to
do something.”

“We are doing something,” Sprite responded testily. “We're doing a
lot.”

“I meant about the nanites. We need to use fire. Bomb them. A
nuke,” Osiris said, eyes feverish. “Yes yes! A nuke!”

The admiral sighed patiently. “Look,” he said as Osiris turned his
attention to the offworlder. “Look, if you use a nuke, the center of the
infection would yes be destroyed, but the outer edges would be pushed outward
and spread by the violent winds and blown across the world, magnifying the
problem. Instead of having one centralized nest to deal with we'd have dozens,
thousands.” He had Sprite project an image of what he was talking about.

“Wouldn't they be too far distributed to reform a hive admiral?”
Doctor Zane asked.

Irons cocked his head. Since when was Zane an expert on nanites?
He thought. “No, you'd think that, and chances are in some cases you'd be
right. But in the overall scheme of things, it would be like evolution. Groups
that didn't have enough cohesion would either go inert or die off as their
batteries ran down. But others that maintained cohesion would rebuild around a
central core.” he used his fist to indicate a nest and then slowly opened it,
implying that it would expand. “Each nest would then be independent of the
others, or they could interact through radio. Sprite has detected the radio
chatter.”

“You have to understand a little bit about nanotech and nanite
organization. We have our own version, the Xeno's had theirs. The common ground
is in the organization. Think of it as a hive. The queens are the brains, they
direct the drone workers. The drones are specialized and generalist workers.
They're the manual labor. Some act as a bucket chain, passing materials, others
do more complicated tasks like manipulate matter.”