The Demon Plagues (21 page)

Three minutes later they met back in the
control room. Repeth remained grim and silent but Muzik began
cursing, a stream of angry profanity punctuated by slams of his
muscled forearm against the bulkhead.

“She killed them. The bitch killed them –
Doc, Harres, Kelley. Thrust to the brain up through the mouth. With
that.” He pointed at the slim black blade where it lay on a
console. “She’s a Psycho, just like you said.” Muzik stomped over
to grab Alkina by her bobbed black hair. He shook her head,
snapping it side to side. “Wake up, bitch!”

“Major! Cease that at once. We can’t get
answers if you harm her in anger. But I don’t want to have to watch
her at every moment and feed her and clean up her mess here in the
control room. Before she comes to, cut her out of that chair and
lock her in a storeroom. Make sure you search her first. Then I
want to look at…at our technicians.” Nguyen swallowed. “Go!”

Muzik and Repeth stowed Alkina in a
storeroom, locking the outside with a screwdriver through the hasp,
and then joining the Colonel back in the control room.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“In the missile room. I’ll show you.”

One minute later they crouched by the bloody
bodies of their three technicians. “Very cold. Very calculating,”
Nguyen said as he turned Kelley’s blindly staring head with a
fingertip. He stood to look around the room. “What’s that?” He
pointed at the missile computer console.

“Looks like…I don’t know. A data module?”
Jill stepped over to pull it out of the data port.

Nguyen nodded. “Now we know why she killed
them. It was to keep them from interfering while she used that. But
for what? The missiles launched correctly.” He rubbed his bare
chin, his nostrils flaring.

Repeth got it first. “But where did the
missiles go?”

“What the hell do you mean?” asked Muzik.

“I believe she means, did that –” he pointed
at the thumb-sized data stick “– change the missile’s targeting or
detonation parameters? And there’s no way to tell.”

“What do you mean, there’s no way to tell?”
Muzik asked angrily.

“I mean, Major, that none of us knows enough
about these things to find out. The three men who could tell us are
dead. The only way to find out is to eventually surface and make
contact with someone, and not get killed or captured in the
process.”

“But where do we go, sir?” asked Repeth. “Can
we trust the Australians?”

Nguyen stared at her for a long moment, then
shrugged with a sigh. “I’m not sure. Chief, can we find the
mini-sub again?”

“Certainly, sor. Assuming the whole goddamned
UG Navy isn’t there to greet us. Assuming we could reach it, it’s
thousands of miles away from here. They could have found it. If I
was them, I’d tag it and watch it with an attack boat, just waiting
for us to come back.”

“All right. Not practical. Any other ideas?”
The Colonel looked around at his three subordinates.

“South Africa? Argentina?”

“How long will that take? Chief?”

“Three thousand nautical miles to Argentina,
six thousand to South Africa. The UG Navy will be covering the
routes to Argentina. Much safer the long way round to South Africa.
Call it two weeks, give or take. We’re already headed west.”

Nguyen said, “I’m not going to wait that
long. We’re just a few days from Australia. The Council’s orders
were to turn the boat over to the Australians, so that’s what we’ll
do. The Free Communities need those six missiles to speed along the
space program; they need the warheads to threaten retaliation.
We’ll just have to hope that the Australian government will play
fair.”

“But Alkina!”

“We don’t know if that was official or she
was off the reservation, but either way, if enough people know
about us they will have to accept the accomplished facts. We’ll
surface and demand to speak to Markis. As soon as we report to him,
we’re safe.” Nguyen raised his eyebrows, soliciting acceptance of
his plan. The other three nodded with relief.

“Sounds good, sir.”

“Now I need to question Alkina. Gunnery
Sergeant, would you accompany me?”

“Uh, sir…” Major Muzik started, “I’d like to
be there when you do.”

Colonel Nguyen’s eyes locked with the bigger
man’s, deceptively calm, placid. “Major…did you sleep with Miss
Alkina? No, let me rephrase that.” He lifted a finger to point in
the direction of the storeroom and his voice hardened. “Did you
have sex
with that
murdering Psycho piece of
shit?”

Muzik’s jaw dropped, his reply an incoherent
gobble.

Nguyen’s voice was a whip. “That sounds like
a yes. Obviously your perspective is compromised, so
no
,
Major, you will
not
accompany me. You will stay here with
Chief Bonnagh until we return. You will not leave this control
room, is that understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Muzik replied miserably.

The Colonel nodded sharply, then stalked out
of the room. Repeth stared daggers at Muzik for a moment, her lip
curling in contempt before following.

Bitzer turned his head away, pretending
deafness. Muzik threw himself into a chair and pounded his knee in
frustration with his fist, over and over.

At the storeroom Nguyen removed the
screwdriver from the hasp. He spoke calmly. “Stay outside, will you
Jill? Come in if there’s some kind of commotion; otherwise, let me
handle this, please?”

She heard his gentle tone.
Thank God he's
trustworthy and on our side
. “Of course, sir.”

Spooky opened the door, went inside.

Relieved to not have to think, to just
execute a simple task for the moment, Repeth leaned against the
opposite bulkhead, staring at the closed door. Her mind was so
tired. She was suddenly ravenous, she needed to pee, and she had
just launched who knows how many megantons of nuclear weapons
at…what? She didn’t know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. What
if…

Inside, Nguyen stared at Alkina.

She opened her eyes and gazed back at him
from her seat atop boxes of cans. “So what now? You missed your
chance to kill me clean.”

He grinned, an expression that stopped short
of his eyes. “Why would I do that?”

“You framed me. You’re a Psycho too. It’s the
only thing that makes sense. I tried to stop your plan, whatever it
was, and I failed. Now you’re going to blame me for whatever you
did. What
did
you do?”

He leaned closer to her, his voice very low.
“I gave Markis a chance. I gave the Free Communities a chance. I
just decapitated the Russians, the Chinese, and most of all, the
United Governments of North America. Thirty-six warheads for the
Russians, thirty-six for the Chinese, and one hundred and twenty
for the Americans. The other twenty-four did just what I said they
would, exploded in orbit, a barrage of EMP that will leave
ninety-eight percent of the satellites up there useless. I just
leveled the playing field. And with a level field, Markis wins. The
Plague wins. It's better world for us.
We
win.”

“But why?” she whispered. “We're both
Psychos. We don’t care about anyone but ourselves. We’re
narcissists. Why would you help him?”

Nguyen chuckled. “As you said – to help
ourselves, and as I said, to level the playing field. For people
like you and me. To prove we aren’t a liability but an asset. You
must be young to be so ignorant. You’re blinded by your
inexperience and your…state of mind. When were you infected? How
old were you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Ah. I was forty-seven. I was already a
stone-cold killer, but I knew what loyalty was. What it meant to be
part of a team, to have brothers in arms. The Plague stripped away
all my confusion, but it didn’t take that knowledge from me. People
are more complex than a label. Even Psychos. Is there no one you
care about beyond yourself?”

“I…I don’t know. I have a sister. We used to
be close. I still…” She licked her lips.

“You see? We’re not the way they say we are.
Not so simple, black and white. In a way, the Edens are just as bad
as the normals. They became what they hated – bigots. They decided
Psychos were subhuman and they rounded them up, all they could
find. But they never found me out. I remembered how to act. I
remembered how to feel, even if those feelings are now secondhand.
When I need to feel…I just put my old self back on, like a
comfortable jacket. How do you do it?”

Alkina swallowed. “Fool them? I was trained.
There is a shadow government in Australia made up of…strange
people. People like you, I think. Smarter Psychos. They trained me
to fool the tests and they…” She ground to a halt, lowering her
eyes.

“You see? You’re not cold at all, not when it
comes to your own self. You’re just as passionate as anyone when
your passions are selfish. So how do they keep you under control?
How do they make sure you don’t go rogue?”

Alkina sat up, slowly stripping off the
remnants of sticky tape from her tunic. As soon as she could, she
took the whole garment off, then lifted her undershirt over her
head, leaving her with just a spandex bra over her flat breasts.
She stroked her skin just below her sternum.

“If it wasn’t Eden-healed, you’d see a scar
here. They implanted me with a fail-safe. A kill switch. Whenever
they want…they just turn me off. Pop, and a pea-sized piece of
plastic explosive next to my heart makes me go away. Like a bad
little girl.” She kept tapping the spot, pensively.

Nguyen nodded. “The ultimate self-interest –
survival. I suspected something like that.”

“So…Colonel…what now?”

“Call me Tran. It’s my first name. We’re
comrades now.”

“We are?” Her dull surprise was genuine.

“Yes. As soon as we turn the boat over to
your government, I will ask for asylum. I have a lot to offer. A
lot up here.” He tapped his head. “I think I can convince them to
let me join the…strange people.”

Alkina looked up at him in wonder, unfamiliar
emotions bubbling to the surface. Not love, not affection; none of
the finer kind of feelings, but instead admiration, and the desire
to give herself over to a leader and a master that had demonstrated
his worthiness. No one else had frightened her, had showed just how
outclassed she was, yet had given her…something, not mercy,
exactly, but…respect. Attention. Appreciation instead of contempt
and derision. Pride in who she was. To a narcissist it was the
ultimate drug, the emotional lifeblood that transcended threats and
fear, the carrot to the stick, the one thing that could make her
wholly his.

He saw it in her eyes, that conversion, and
this time his smile was genuine. He reached out his hand to brush
her cheek. “Now all you have to do is play along until we get
there. They will go home, and we stay in Australia to build a
better world.” He laughed. “Again.”

Her smile was a ghost of his, a weak, wan,
unpracticed thing, but it was there. She shrugged, attempting
humor. “If at first you don’t succeed…”

Captain Absen stared at the weapon in front
of him on his tiny cabin desk. It was a lovely thing and deadly, a
.45 automatic based on the venerable M1911 but much more modern.
Knurled wooden grips and silver highlights made it lovely; the
hollow-point cartridge in the chamber made it deadly.

A knock at his door startled him. Sliding the
handgun under his mattress he called, “Come in.”

“Sir, SITREP from Fleet.” The rating handed
his captain the secure tablet with the situation report, then shut
the door as he left. On the screen the hard facts leaped out at
him. Nuclear strikes. Washington. New York. Boston. Atlanta.
Norfolk. Chicago. He ran his finger down the list, over a hundred
entries long.

San Diego. Coronado. Kathleen and the kids,
in his house on Captain’s Row. He closed his eyes, swaying
sick.

Maybe they weren’t in town. There’s no way he
would know; the sub had been out and incommunicado for four months.
He looked through the list again. Pueblo, Colorado, where her
parents lived, wasn’t on it. Colorado Springs was the closest
strike listed. And they usually took the route through Flagstaff
and Albuquerque; Los Alamos was on the list but nothing else on the
way. He grasped at the hope, slim as it was.

Pulling out the gun again, he checked the
action. Playing with it, feeling its heft in his hand. Imagining
the force of the bullet as it crashed through his brain, ending all
anxiety and worry.

Even if his family survived, Captain Absen
himself had failed. He might come home to find Kathleen being
tortured in a Unionist prison cell, his children held hostage. That
would be worse than having lost them clean in nuclear fire. Still,
there was hope, and even if they were gone, he had over one hundred
men depending on him.

Henrich Absen had never been one to shirk his
duty. He unloaded and cleared the weapon and put it away.

The
Nebraska
cruised on the surface
into Australia’s Garden Island submarine base under heavy escort,
an attack submarine shadowing them with open torpedo tubes and
destroyers with guns and missiles locked onto them on either flank.
A naval special operations team came aboard and disarmed Nguyen and
his crew, marching them away for questioning after piloting the
Nebraska
into its dock in a covered pen.

They were interrogated separately for five
days. Eventually an Argentine Air Force long-range transport plane
picked up Repeth, Muzik and Bonnagh, along with three coffins. A
British Union Jack, a Congolese flag, and an old-style Stars and
Stripes draped the boxes as they were loaded with full military
honors.

When the big cargo plane had taken off and
they could converse with only moderately raised voices, the three
Free Community troops put their heads together for the first time
since they had been detained.