The Winter War (4 page)

‘What is it you’re doing?’
Abigail asked once each sample tube had been carefully set into a
slot in a rack attached to the side of the machine.

‘Well, this machine will squeeze
out the DNA in the samples,’ Ella replied, ‘and then use something
called PCR to make more of it. Then it’ll section up the DNA it
finds, take away the Human parts, and from what’s left work out
what the bug everyone’s infected with is.’

‘DNA?’

‘Deoxyribonucleic acid. You’ve
never heard of that?’

‘No. Should I have?’

Ella hit the start button on the
analyser and then looked around toward Kaffrey who was waiting for
the results. ‘Kids in the first few years of school back where I
come from have heard of DNA, even if they don’t know much about
it.’

The scientist gave a shrug. ‘To
what end? How does it help them do what they’re meant to do?’

‘They’re six. They don’t
know
what they want to do.’

‘
Want
to do?’ Kaffrey
looked a little confused. ‘Up here they farm or mine. I was
training to be an epidemiologist from the age of ten. I always knew
what I was going to do. I’m sure Abigail was the same. Her mother
taught her to care for visitors in the guest houses from a young
age.’

Ella looked at Abigail and got a
nod of agreement. ‘Oh,’ Ella said. ‘Well, we should have results in
about a minute.’

The airlock hissed open and
Aneka and Marsden appeared, the latter starting to remove her
helmet as soon as she had space to do so. ‘Did I hear you say
results?’ Aneka asked.

‘Soon,’ Ella replied. ‘We got
the samples. I just put them into the machine.’

‘What about the patients?’

‘It’s not good,’ Kaffrey
replied. ‘We’re going to lose more of them before we can get a cure
replicated. I’ve given them doses of the best general antibiotics
we have, but…’

Aneka frowned and nodded. ‘We’re
sure it’s plague?’

Kaffrey nodded. ‘It is, but it’s
the most vicious strain I’ve ever come across. It seems to spread
rapidly through the system and then cross into the lungs from the
bloodstream. Once that happens it’s going to kill the subject in
two days at the best. The lungs fill with fluids and they start
choking… It isn’t a nice way to die.’

The analyser chimed, its screen
lighting up with data displays. ‘Well,’ Ella said, ‘let’s see if we
can come up with a way to avoid too many more deaths.’

~~~

Abigail was looking uncomfortable as she
walked into the cockpit of the shuttle. She fidgeted a little and
then sat down in the co-pilot’s chair, frowning.

‘Something wrong?’ Aneka
asked.

‘No, nothing.’ Aneka waited for
a few seconds and then Abigail said, ‘Well, Doctor Kaffrey and
Councillor Marsden have retired for the night, and Ella says I
should too because there’s nothing we can do until the medical
truck arrives tomorrow.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And Doctor Kaffrey just
undressed and lay down like I wasn’t there, and so did Councillor
Marsden, and I don’t have a nightdress, and it wouldn’t be proper.
What if Doctor Kaffrey wants… well, companionship…?’

Aneka managed to suppress most
of the grin. ‘Have you ever had a Citizen want companionship
before?’

‘Uh, well, no. Their guards…
I’ve had to entertain them.’ She said it with some distaste.

‘Huh. Well the closest thing
there is around here to a guard is me and I’m not going to ask you.
Citizens… Let’s just say that they have other methods of fulfilling
their needs. You’re quite safe. Leave your shirt on if being naked
makes you uncomfortable.’

Abigail blushed; it was rather
pretty. ‘I, um, hadn’t thought of that. You don’t mind if I undress
here, do you?’

‘You’ve seen me stark naked,
girl, why would I mind?’

The blush got deeper. Abigail
had displayed something of a fixation with both Aneka’s and Ella’s
breasts. Aneka figured that cosmetic enhancements were not
something you saw a lot of on Old Earth since the girl seemed
rather uncomfortable with the idea of girl-girl sex. She did,
however, get up and start taking her clothes off; her jeans anyway
and then, with a bit of manipulation, her bra was pulled out from
beneath her shirt. Leaving her shirt and panties on, she headed
back to lie down on one of the bunks.

Ella came through a minute or so
later, grinning. ‘Abigail’s cute when she blushes.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Got good legs too. She should
wear skirts more often.’

‘Leave her be. She’s
uncomfortable enough about this.’

Ella pouted, dropping into the
co-pilot’s seat. ‘I wasn’t going to do anything with her. I’ve got
work to keep my mind off… well, my crotch.’ Her face straightened
and she bent forward, lowering her voice. ‘This strain of Y.
pestis, it’s… I think it was engineered.’

Aneka frowned and turned her
seat toward Ella. ‘Someone did this on purpose?’

‘I’m not sure, but I think so.
There’s something else. When Kaffrey saw the gene sequence he
looked
really
uncomfortable. Like he recognised it and
didn’t like it.’

‘Whatever it is, it came from
the city.’ Ella nodded and there was a moment’s silence.
‘Logistically, it had to have been sent out before I killed
Yrimtan.’

Ella nodded again. ‘Given time
for infection and then the incubation period, and then time for the
first obvious symptoms to show up. Yes, but why?’

‘Same reason she was going to
kill Gillian and Bash,’ Aneka growled. ‘And why she killed the
medics who worked on you. She was making sure that no one who knew
about us, about me, was going to tell about it.’

15
^th
August.

Something that looked like a big,
armoured bus rolled into the square just after dawn. Kaffrey and
Marsden were already up and wearing their suits, and they headed
out through the shuttle’s airlock immediately.

Aneka headed back to the bunk
room where Abigail was just waking, disturbed by the exit of the
two Citizens. Settling at the foot of Abigail’s bunk, Aneka watched
as the young girl rubbed her eyes and tried to persuade her brain
to function.

‘Abigail, the first people to
come down with the plague? Did they have anything in common?’

‘Uh… Well, Missus Cooper was the
first to die. Her son was sick and there’s not much in common
there. She was pretty old and stayed at home, mostly. The only time
she’d go out was to take him his lunch…’ Abigail’s eyes narrowed.
‘Thinking about it, most of the first cases were people with flocks
up on the west side.’

Aneka nodded. ‘All right. We’ll
get you in a suit. The medics will need your help treating the
current victims as soon as they’ve got the cure ready. I’m going to
take Ella up to the western pastures and see if we can find a
source for this plague.’

‘Be careful up there. With the
disease people haven’t been tending their flocks. The ogres are
bound to have noticed and they’ll be more bold.’

‘Aneka can handle a few ogres,’
Ella said as she walked up from the back carrying two mugs. ‘Here,
try this. It’s coffee. Should help you wake up, especially if
you’re not used to it.’

Abigail took the mug and looked
at the dark brown liquid uncertainly. She took a sip, swallowed,
and then wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s, um, different.’

‘An acquired taste, perhaps,’
Aneka said, taking her own mug from Ella and then downing a huge
gulp. She sighed. ‘I’ve definitely acquired it.’

~~~

They had spotted half a dozen dead sheep
by the time they had managed to walk through to the section of
fields which they had been in before with David, Mark, and Marie.
Aneka was quietly fuming.

‘It’s not just that they’ve lost
animals and it’s my fault. The fucking monsters are killing things
and then just leaving them here to rot!’ Aneka knelt beside the
latest dead animal and examined the matted fur over its eyes. It
had been killed recently, a sharp object rammed through the top of
its skull. ‘Bastards,’ she muttered. ‘I hope they are out in the
light. I’ll put a few holes in their skulls.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ Ella
countered. ‘Assuming there’s proof that Yrimtan did this, it still
wouldn’t be your fault. She’s the one who tried to kill everyone.
You couldn’t have known she’d try to do that either because we
didn’t know she was alive when we came here.’

Aneka straightened up and
stalked off across the field. ‘I’m feeling guilty, don’t bug me
with facts.’

Ella giggled. ‘It’s really not
your fault, love. There’s no way… Hey, fuck! Something bit me!’

‘We’re in a sheep field, Ella.
There’s probably all sorts of things up here that bite… And bubonic
plague uses fleas as a vector, right?’

‘Uh-huh,’ Ella replied, and then
she bent over at the hips as though she was trying to fold herself
in half. She got most of her flexibility from her mother, though
Janna practised more and so was better at it. ‘This,’ Ella said,
‘is not a normal flea bite.’

Dropping down beside her, Aneka
found the red mark on Ella’s calf soon enough. ‘It looks like a
bite…’

‘You have telescopic focus, but
not microscopic,’ Ella replied. ‘The wound is too perfect. That’s
an injection mark.’

‘And I am detecting a
low-powered, distributed node network operating around us,’ Al
added. ‘I’m attempting to isolate a central location.’

‘Al says he’s detecting…’ Aneka
began and then slapped her hand down on her thigh with a resounding
smack.

Ella blinked. ‘If we’re going to
do that, I’d like to be the spankee.’

Aneka lifted her hand away from
her leg carefully, peering at the black smudge on the heel of her
hand. ‘Maybe later, for now you can use your superior vision on
this.’

Ella peered at the smudge.
‘It’s… Well it
was
a microbot. Some sort of fake flea. Long
propelling legs and a drill bit for a snout. No sign of any
external power source so I’m guessing there’s a hive somewhere
where it could recharge. There’s probably more of them.’

‘There is a higher concentration
of signals coming from the other side of the wall,’ Al said, and
Aneka brushed the robot remains off her hand and vaulted the pile
of stones which passed for a dividing line between the fields.

‘Here,’ she said almost
immediately. There was a metal cylinder lying beside the stones; a
rocket payload of some description from the look of it. She could
even see a couple of tiny, black dots on the lip of the port in the
side of the thing.

Ella leaned over the wall and
looked down. ‘The question is, is that the only one?’

‘The question is, can we close
them down and stop them infecting people again?’

‘I can kill this one,’ Al
supplied. ‘I have already hacked their command system. It is based
on the city network. The transmitter in the shuttle should be
capable of blanketing the entire area and taking care of any
others.’

‘Al thinks he can close them all
down from the shuttle,’ Aneka said aloud. ‘Let’s get out of here.
Just the thought of those things is making me itch.’

Ella winced. ‘Your skin’s fake.
Try being me.’

Aneka hopped back over the wall
and gave Ella a pat on the bottom to get her moving. ‘I’m not sure
I could cope with being you, love. I’m sure if I thought about sex
that much my head would explode.’

‘Hey! I don’t think about it
that much… Well… Normally I don’t.’

~~~

‘We lost three more overnight,’ Kaffrey
said. The man looked tired, but rather satisfied despite that
statement. ‘However, the remaining victims are beginning to recover
and we’re ready to start inoculations tomorrow to make sure no one
else gets it. I’ve asked for some volunteers and I’ve got four
medi-techs willing to stay up here for a couple of weeks to make
sure there are no problems with recovery.’

Aneka nodded. ‘That’s good. And
since Abigail isn’t here I can add that Ella and I located the
distribution missiles, hacked the microbot controllers, deactivated
them, and got rid of the evidence. So there’s no danger of future
infection and, I want to make this quite clear, no one gets to know
where this bug came from.
Ever!
Understood?’

Kaffrey went paler than usual
and Marsden’s eyes widened. ‘How did you know?’ the Councillor
asked.

‘You people have more advanced
technology than we do,’ Ella replied, ‘but not advanced enough that
we can’t figure out what’s what. And you also have worse poker
faces than I do. When we realised the bug had been engineered, and
I’m good enough at biology to figure that out, even if the computer
isn’t, we went out and looked for the vector.’

‘Point is,’ Aneka said, ‘this
was Manu Dei’s doing. You people are the new guard. I won’t have
this messing up your chances of working with the people up here. So
this was a terrible natural event, a mutation of the bacterium,
just like the many others that have occurred down the centuries. It
was
not
created in a lab in Prime City and deployed by an
insane, isolationist, control freak.’

Marsden looked over at Kaffrey.
Both of them looked a little surprised. ‘We were trying to keep it
a secret,’ Kaffrey said. ‘I mean, we thought you’d want to…’

‘Blow up the best chance we have
of seeing a stable political system here over the idiocy of one
woman?’ Aneka suggested.

‘Well, when you put it like
that…’

Aneka smiled, though the
expression came nowhere near her eyes which contained a bright
spark of sarcasm. ‘Excellent! We’re all on the same page. We’ve
established that you lot aren’t going to bullshit us because we are
just as smart as you are, and also that you can work with us to get
this relationship going.’

‘Okay,’ Marsden said. ‘I guess
we can live with that. What’s the plan from here?’

‘Ella and I are going to stay
here for a while. In fact, your nursing staff can sleep on the
shuttle if they want. They’ll feel less like they’re slumming.’