The Demon Plagues (5 page)

Down into the enormous ship she tottered,
holding onto railings and moving slowly. Sweat broke out on her
brow, and she fended off two concerned inquiries with explanations
of recovering from food poisoning. She didn’t like the way the
people looked at her; she had chosen food poisoning as an
explanation precisely because it was neither unusual nor
contagious.

These people seemed on edge. The crew must
have been told the same lies about a deadly disease aboard the
cruise ship, and they were jittery. Maybe going to the 3RT wasn’t
the best choice. She suddenly realized who she might be able to
trust – by law, custom and regulation.

Five minutes later she was leaning against
the chaplain’s door. She hoped he would be a calm, sensible sort
that could keep his mouth shut. If she was lucky, she would get a
Catholic priest. Priests had reputations for keeping confidences.
For this, she needed someone unshakeable.

The door opened to show a pleasant, pink,
thirtyish face attached to a short, chubby body with bottle-red,
collar-length hair. She stared at the Navy Lieutenant’s bars on the
right lapel of the woman’s combat cammies, and the cross on the
left, disoriented by preconceptions. Her name tag read
‘Forman’.

“Can I help you?” Lieutenant Forman’s accent
was cultured, New England – Boston perhaps, or Maine. It reminded
Jill strongly of Katherine Hepburn, before the quaver. Or maybe a
Kennedy.

“Yes, ma’am. Permission to enter?”

“Of course, Sergeant.” The chaplain stepped
back, then closed the hatch behind Repeth as she gingerly tottered
in. “Please, sit. Are you ill?”

Jill sat. “No, my prostheses are giving me a
bit of trouble.” She reached down to thump on her boots, bringing
forth a decidedly artificial sound.

“Ah. Well, here we are. Coffee? Tea? Soda, or
some juice?” She gestured at a compact coffee maker which sat upon
an equally tiny refrigerator. “Privileges of the ministry.”

“Juice would be great, and if you happen to
have anything to eat…I missed chow.”

Forman slid a tin of shortbread cookies off a
shelf near her feet, opening it and setting it on the desk within
reach, then pulled out a cold can of orange juice for Jill, a
coffee cup for herself.

“You have the look of someone with a lot on
her mind.”

Jill stuffed two cookies into her mouth,
drank the juice in one pull. She gazed at Forman from under lowered
eyebrows. “You don’t know the tenth of it. But before I go on…how
confidential is this conversation?”

“As confidential as you want it to be.”

“And what if I told you I had done something
unlawful? Would you stick to that?”

Forman sat back, blowing on her hot coffee,
contemplating. “Are we talking capital crimes here?” She smiled,
obviously only half joking.

Jill stared, intent. “I don’t think so.
Mostly just Article 92.”

“Failure to obey a lawful order. I can tell
you then with ironclad certainty that my lips are sealed.” She took
a drink of her coffee, made a face. “It’s this ship’s water. I ran
out of bottled a while back.”

Repeth took a deep breath. “All right. I
choose to trust you.” A pause. “I am not assigned to this
ship.”

Forman’s eyebrows flew up in surprise, and
she sat forward, putting her chin on her fist. “Really? That’s a
new one, not that my military career is particularly long or
distinguished. Do tell.” Her eyes sparked with the cheeky joy of
shared secrets.

Jill shook her head angrily. “Ma’am…six hours
ago I was looking at this LPD from the railing of that cruise ship
you have under quarantine. I just swam twelve miles, I’m hungry,
and I’m not in the mood for casual conversation. And there is no
disease aboard that ship. At least, nothing…nothing bad.”

Forman opened her hand to drum her fingers on
her own cheek, staring into Jill’s eyes, as if seeking truth. “Dear
me. Dear me. Sergeant, I never thought to say this, but I am at a
loss. What do you want me to do?”

“Ma’am...I haven’t a clue. But I’m exhausted.
I need food and rest, and I’m holding my head up by sheer
willpower. Is there somewhere…”

“On a ship? We both know that every space is
spoken for. You might be able to join the crew as a transfer in and
get away with it for a few days…”

“Just let me eat and sleep, then I’ll be able
to think straight. Please?”

Forman thought for a moment. “Take my cabin.”
She gestured to a door in the back of the tiny office. “No one will
disturb you. I can sleep in my chair if need be. I’ll go get some
food to go from the mess.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Jill stumbled to the
cabin’s bunk, falling asleep as her head hit the pillow.

The wolverine in her guts woke her up. Faint
light from the open office door illuminated food cartons next to
the bunk. She wolfed down their contents – sandwiches, fruit,
potato chips, milk – then rolled over and went back to sleep.

A long black time later, a giant club struck
the ship like a gong, throwing her out of her bunk and onto the
deck. She yelped as the impact twisted her wrist, then again as she
put her weight on the prostheses. She gave up and went back to one
hand and two knees, crawling along the heaving deck to the
doorway.

Chaplain Forman was sitting on the deck as
well, holding her head. She would have a nasty shiner soon, above
her right eye. The two women stared at each other, and then Forman
clawed her way to her seat behind the desk as the PA came to
life.

“Now hear this, now hear this. General
Quarters, General Quarters, all hands General Quarters. Condition
Zebra.” They felt the ship get under weigh, the sound of the screws
churning at flank speed, maximum revolutions.

“I have to go to my station in the infirmary.
You stay here!” Forman pointed severely at Repeth with an
emphasizing finger.

An hour of sweat later the chaplain returned,
teeth clenched. “The scuttlebutt is your cruise ship just exploded.
Lost with all souls. One of the corpsmen said they saw streaks of
light from the sky, then it just vanished in a fireball. Someone
should be court-martialed – the
Ingraham
was a lot closer
than we were, and has been gravely damaged. Their wounded are being
medevacked to us. I have to get right back.”

“You know what this means, don’t you,
ma’am?”

“It means the US government just murdered
three thousand innocent people because they thought they were sick.
They must have been extremely frightened to do something like that.
Though perhaps they have a right to be. Terrorists just detonated
two nuclear weapons on US soil: one in Los Angeles, another in West
Virginia.”

Sergeant Repeth gaped in shock. “Los Angeles?
What the hell is going on? Just what…” She trailed off,
stunned.

“Something rotten in the state of Denmark,
methinks. I have to go.”

Jill just raised a shaky palm as Forman left,
not looking. She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes,
damning her leaking tear ducts.
Los Angeles
. Her whole
family was in Los Angeles, her parents and her little brother and
uncles and cousins...

She waited as long as she could, until the
ship secured from General Quarters and the watertight doors and
hatches were allowed open and the ship slowed; they must have
gotten word they were not under attack after all. She wondered why
the two naval ships had not been told to move away before the
attack on the cruise ship.

Her first concern was more information. She
also needed more food, and to move the illicit gear she'd stashed
back in the compartment. Angrily she shook her head, throwing the
tears off, wiping her eyes with her sleeves. Stood up, gritting her
teeth against the pain, and strode out into the passageway.

The ship was busy, sailors and Marines
scurrying about with extreme sense of purpose. The amphibious well
was filled with people, checking landing craft and gear, loading
armored vehicles aboard the huge hovercraft, chaining them down to
hardpoints on the decks. She saw live ammunition being hoisted into
the tanks and personnel carriers.

The very busyness hid her, just one uniform
among scores, hurrying about a task. She climbed the ladder to the
compartment where she'd hid her gear, using mostly her upper body
strength, and then struggled back down with the rucksack,
everything stuffed inside it.

“Hey, let me give you a hand.” He was
smiling, handsome, cheerful and dark. She saw Staff Sergeant’s
stripes, and ‘Gaona’ printed on his nametag.

“No, I got it.” She grimly struggled on.

“Come on, Sergeant. You know, chivalry isn’t
really dead.”

“With all due respect, Staff Sergeant, you
can stow that shit where the sun don’t shine. I pull my weight.” At
that moment, the jury-rigged prosthesis on her left leg failed her,
twisting sideways under the pressure of walking down the ladder
steps. She would have fallen had he not caught her, setting her
gently on the deck, along with her rucksack.

He looked at her lower leg, then her face,
then back again. “You should be screaming about now, so I’m going
to guess that’s not your real leg. I mean, that’s…” Confusion
showed on his face.

She bit back her embarrassment to growl,
“It’s a prosthesis. I need to re-secure it. Just help me get out of
everyone’s way.”

Accepting his support she hobbled a few yards
on one leg to a spot against the bulkhead. Once there she pulled up
her trouser cuffs and began redoing the bindings. “Thanks, Staff
Sergeant. But you don’t have to do any more. I’m good.”

Pursing his lips he nodded, then shrugged as
he pointedly read her name tag. “Okay, Sergeant Repeth. I’ll see
you around.” His tone was playful.

She watched him walk away.
Just as
good-looking from this angle, and he knows it. Oh, Jill, give it a
rest, not the time for the libido to act up
. Funny, she’d been
feeling friskier the last few days. Maybe it was from the…the
whatever-it-was that was fixing her legs.

Boot and straps again secure, she stood back
up and hefted the rucksack down the passageway toward the
chaplain’s berth. After dropping that off, she made her way to the
nearest mess. The galley crew was in full swing, and she loaded up
on everything she could, demolished the whole tray, then did it
again. She didn’t think she could get away with a third; one of the
mess ratings had looked at her strangely the second time through.
Fortified, she stumped down the passageways to the other enlisted
mess and went through the line there too.

This time she could eat slowly enough to
listen to the scuttlebutt. She chose a spot close to a group of
sailors in uniforms somewhat crisper than average. She thought they
were part of the CIC, the Combat Information Center, nerve center
for operations aboard. Maybe they would know what was going on.

“The Old Man said it was a kinetic
strike.”

“Kinetic strike of what?”

“Inert reentry vehicles. Like nukes but just
made of metal.”

“No way that could have blasted that cruise
ship like it did.”

“Dude, those things come in at fifteen
thousand
miles an hour. Mach 20. I ran the energy on my
computer – it’s way enough. Like manmade meteors. I’m surprised it
didn’t take
Ingy
with it.”

“It almost did, from what I hear. Two dozen
dead and fifty wounded.”

“Somebody screwed up bad. They should have
had her move away.”

“If they wanted it gone, why didn’t they just
have us do it? With a missile or the guns or something?”

“Dunno, man, dunno. Maybe all them civilians
on board. Glad I didn’t have to push that button.”

“Oh, yeah. That would suck. So where we going
now?”

The sailors all stared at the questioner, a
young junior enlisted rating, but no one spoke. Security prohibited
talking about operational details, such as their destination,
outside of secure spaces.

“Sorry.”

“That’s what I always tell them you are.”

“What?”

“You’re sorry.” The sailors laughed.

Jill finished her third tray. Replete at
last, she went back and got a to-go carton for later.

When she slipped into Chaplain Forman’s
office she found the older woman staring at her shipnet computer
screen. “Come here,” the lieutenant said. She pointed at an open
e-mail.

“All hands, pass this message. Sergeant
Repeth report immediately to the Personnel Support Detachment.”

“Someone must have noticed you weren’t on the
manifest.”

Jill growled. “Gaona.”

Forman looked a question.

“Just a nice guy that tried to help. Probably
tried to look me up at Personnel and found out I wasn’t in the
system. Now they’re trying to find me. There goes my anonymity. F–
umm, freaking do-gooders. Sorry, ma’am.”

“I’ve heard salty language before, Sergeant.
I’m sure Jesus did too.”

“Yeah, Jesus…ma’am – I need to get off this
ship. I need to get to somewhere that I can plausibly rejoin from –
I can say I missed the cruise – that I got drunk and got left
behind in the Bahamas or something. Do you know where we’re
headed?”

“Yes, and I think I know how to get you off
the ship. We’re going to Norfolk to transfer the wounded ashore to
Bethesda. That’s how you’ll go – as combat wounded.”

Jill looked at her doubtfully. “That seems
pretty iffy. I don’t have any fresh wounds.”

“You’ll have a concussion. Disorientation,
you can’t think straight. It will be the perfect cover. And I’ll
attend the wounded. Nothing more natural. I’ll make sure you get
left alone. Then, at Bethesda, you’ll disappear in the
shuffle.”

“Ma’am…that sounds like it will work. Can I
say, you’re the most…unusual chaplain I’ve ever run across?”

“Why, are most of them you have met
cowards?”

“No, just more sticklers for the rules, I
guess.”