Jeff Carlson - Plague War

The emotion in his eyes was both haunted and amazed. Hernandez was glad to be wrong, Cam realized. Despite everything else that had happened, he took comfort in discovering that Leadville continued to rely on him.

“We thought they were punishing us,” Hernandez said. “We thought the meat was only a way to keep us on a short leash.”

“They trusted you.”

“I was already committing treason,” he said, looking left and right at his Marines. He was using his confession to bring them closer to him. He had recovered from his shock, and again Cam was stunned by the man’s abilities. Everything was a lesson to him. His entire focus was on his troops and the never-ending process of improving them — and he was stronger for it. Not for the ‚rst time, Cam envied Hernandez.

“Sir, a lot of us were looking to the rebels,” Watts said, and Deborah added, “It wouldn’t have mattered. You had nothing to do with the bombing.”

“It does matter,” Hernandez said. “I should have stuck it out. What if the president’s council heard some rumor of what I was doing? What if that’s why they didn’t tell me about the vaccine? Think what we could have done with it if we’d known. We could have moved down onto the highways. We could have dug in and stopped the Chinese cold.”

Cam frowned to himself. It was true that a lot of good opportunities had been missed, but it troubled him that Hernandez could ignore the way he’d been used as a test subject. It was a blind spot. His fealty was the real difference between them, and Cam was angry for him. Cam was angry at him.

“You said they gave us two kinds of nanotech,” Hernandez said, coughing again as he turned to Ruth.

She nodded. “We called it the ghost when we found it in Grand Lake. Nobody could tell what it did, and Leadville must have put it through several generations in a hurry. We isolated at least four strains before we got here.”

“But it’s not a vaccine.”

“No. Yes. In a way, yes. I kept thinking that most of the radiation victims we met weren’t as bad off as they should have been, but no one had a real idea how close they were to the blast. No one except you.”

Above them, the night rippled with birds, an unexpected, darting swarm that lifted a shout of warning from one of the Marines. Cam †inched.

Ruth barely reacted to the interruption, her voice hushed and intense. “Sir, you should be dead. The rads you took are off the scale, but you also have the most advanced version of the ghost I’ve seen. It’s some kind of overall booster. I think it’s a prototype that was intended to protect against the snow†ake. Soldiers carrying a perfect version of it could probably hit the enemy with the snow†ake and not see any effects themselves…and I think it’s helping your tissues stay intact despite the radiation damage. It’s gradually cleaning your cells.” She tipped her face up toward Cam, then looked back at Hernandez and said, “It’s rebuilding you.”

“But I’m sicker than ever.”

“I don’t think it can keep up. It’s an early model.”

Hernandez didn’t say anything else, although his mind must have been racing. Cam was still trying to make sense of everything they’d heard and he hadn’t just learned that he belonged in his grave.

“I’m sorry.” Ruth reached for Hernandez again, and the general took her hand.

She could ‚x us, Cam thought.

“I’m so sorry,” Ruth said, but Hernandez pressed his lips into a thin smile and said, “They kept us alive longer than we had any right to expect.” He meant himself and the survivors from his company. He was still drawing connections between himself and Leadville, taking comfort in the past.

“Can you save him?” Cam asked, because it would have been awful to say what he really wanted to know. Can you ‚x me? He was ashamed to be so sel‚sh, because Hernandez continued to put everyone else ‚rst. Hernandez wouldn’t plead with her, not for himself — but his troops spoke on his behalf.

“Make the nanotech better,” Watts said. “Please,” Foshtomi added, as another man said, “The thing already works pretty good, right?”

Ruth ducked her head. Every day she seemed more humble, which was strange in someone so masterful. Her little habit of turning away came frequently now and Cam remembered the gesture especially from the day she’d ‚rst met Allison, avoiding the younger woman. Ruth was learning to evade challenges, which was dangerous for all of them, and Cam shared some of the blame for her indecisiveness.

“Maybe,” she said at last. “Yes. The potential here is incredible. The model you have inside you represents the best work of the top people in nanotech, ‚fty researchers with full machining gear and computers.”

She meant that she was alone. She was still hedging her words, as if there were any possibility they wouldn’t back her into this corner. Their lives depended on it. More importantly, her work would shape the outcome of the war. Mankind would rebuild on North America. There was no question of that, but the color of the natives’ skin and the languages they spoke would depend on Ruth’s success or failure.

The ability to move freely in the plague zones was only the beginning. A nanotech capable of healing even serious wounds would make them unstoppable.

Cam †exed his ruined hands and glanced at Deborah, Ruth, and Hernandez, all of them hurt in different ways. What if they were able to stand up again after being shot or burned? They would be superhuman, and Cam tried to form a prayer to all of the scientists who had been killed in Leadville.

Help her, he thought. You can help her somehow. Shouldn’t they be able to talk to Ruth through their work? There would be clues and other evidence in the nanotech, obvious problems to ‚x and improvements to be made.

“You’ve done it before,” Cam said.

“I’ve seen it,” Watts agreed.

In the lab in Sacramento, Ruth had quickly drawn together and improved the work of four science teams, building upon the original archos tech to create the ‚rst working vaccine. Of course, she had also had the help of two specialists, D.J. and Todd, both of whom were either dead or hopelessly lost.

“A lot of people are depending on you,” Hernandez said.

Ruth wouldn’t look at them. “I need time,” she said. “Maybe too much time. And I don’t have any equipment here.”

“You do in Grand Lake,” Hernandez said.

“Yes. Some.”

“We can get you there.”

* * * *

They ran northeast on the morning of July 1 st, moving downhill before the dawn lifted over the horizon. The mountains in the east topped out at fourteen thousand feet, hiding the sun. Cam felt his gaze drawn again and again to those peaks. It was dif‚cult to tell in the brilliant new light, but those mountains looked unusually smooth along their southern edges. They were melted . Their bulk was all that had spared Aspen Valley from the bombing, channeling the worst of the blast away. Even so, Ruth’s escort had quickly hiked into an area where the ground was a marsh, still waterlogged from the †oods of snowmelt, and yet the fallen trees were brittle and dry.

“Watch out.” Foshtomi stopped Cam from following Mitchell. Mitchell had stepped over a dead gray stump into an ordinary-looking puddle, but the surface was deceptive. Mitchell sunk to his hip. He twisted to grab the stump and Foshtomi splashed forward to help, both of them coated with the spotty black muck of eroding bark. “Hang on,” Foshtomi called.

Cam looked back. They were in the middle of the group to assist Ruth while most of the squad ranged ahead, but Ruth was already looking for another way through, talking with Deborah. She pointed and moved left.