Нэнси Кресс - Terran Tomorrow

“No. They’ll have it.” But three more comatose people affected the allele frequency rate. “How many does that make, total?”

“Thirty. Plus Kayla Rhinehart and Glamet^vor¡.”

Thirty-two out of about seven hundred people: roughly 4.5 percent. “Who are the new v-comas?”

“A kitchen worker, a soldier, and a lab tech from Dr. Sullivan’s team.”

The lab tech was faintly surprising: Lab personnel had been exposed earlier to the star-farers than had the Settlers, yet this tech was just now lapsing into v-comas. But, then, there were always variations in innate resistance.

He focused more sharply on Claire. He didn’t know her well; his insane hours working meant he’d barely interacted with anyone from World except Marianne. Claire was small, pretty, drooping with fatigue even though it was only around noon—wasn’t it? He’d lost track of time. He said, “Aren’t you supposed to have an Army bodyguard with you? Where is he?”

“He’s the soldier who just went comatose.” She took a step forward, hesitated, raised a hand and let it drop, and then it all burst out of her. “I can’t do anything for them. Nothing. The nurses keep them clean and turned and hydrated. But we’re running out of nutrient solution, and then what? And there is nothing I can do for the v-comas. I can’t do anything for anybody else, either. The soldier brought in from the raid was dead, Sugiyama died twenty minutes ago, and the children won’t let anyone near them.”

“A raid? What children? Wait… Frank Sugiyama the physicist ?”

“You didn’t know that Colonel Jenner attacked Sierra Depot this morning?”

“No! I’ve been—”

“The Army destroyed those fighter jets that New America’s been strafing us with, plus everything else at the depot, or at least that’s what Colin Jenner said. He was there. They brought back Sugiyama and his children, but Sugiyama had been tortured and his kids are traumatized beyond belief.”

Colin Jenner? A raid? Why didn’t Zack ever know what was going on?

Tears, silent and the more terrible for being silent, slid down Claire’s cheeks. She swiped them away. “Sorry. I just feel so… helpless.”

“We all do.”

Except, apparently, Jenner. Zack tried to catch up to events. “Then New America won’t be attacking the base anymore?”

“Well, not from Sierra Depot, anyway. Zack—are you any closer to finding out anything useful about these comas?”

“No. We—”

A newly recruited nurse, very young, dashed into the lab. “Doctor! They need you now! The alien—the boy—”

“Belok^?” Claire said sharply.

“Yes! A few minutes ago, nobody was there except his sister, but then I—”

“What is it, Josie? Is Belok^ dead?”

“No. He woke up.”

A flock of birds nested on bushes just outside the new signal station. The station had been hastily dug by a bore-bot into the side of a sloping ravine. Jason, accompanied by Captain Goldman, tried not to slip on the muddy hillside on the way to the camouflaged entrance. Rain sparkled on tall weeds; at the bottom of the ravine a brook murmured. He paused briefly to scowl at the birds.

They were sparrows. Until RSA, Jason could not have told a sparrow from a goldfinch, but everyone had learned about sparrows. Native to Eurasia, the small, plump, gray-brown house sparrows were now found on every continent except Antarctica. Some idiot had introduced them into the United States in 1852. They weighed about an ounce, liked to bathe in dust, hopped rather than walked on the ground, ate seeds and insects. House sparrows were mostly monogamous, although adultery occurred often. They laid two to seven clutches of eggs every year. They would build their domed nests almost anywhere—in bushes, under eaves, in cacti, on top of streetlights for the warmth. They liked to be near groups of humans.

This group was settling down to roost. They chirruped to each other: orphilip orphilip orphilip . A few tucked their heads under their wings, preparing to sleep. An adorable illustration from a children’s book, deadly with unseen plague. Jason restrained himself from pulling out his sidearm and shooting them.

Inside, this version of the signal station was small and crude, the worst one Jason had seen yet. Two muddy pallets on the floor, rations in plastic bins, three buckets of water, and the sophisticated console connected to the even more sophisticated equipment hidden somewhere in the forest outside.

Li and DeFord saluted.

“As you were. Lieutenant, Specialist, you are both commended for carrying out your part of Operation Flamingo perfectly.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I need a link to HQ.”

“Yes, sir,” DeFord said, grimacing. He knew—they both knew—what was coming. Jason had chosen DeFord carefully, knowing that he needed someone here that he could trust as much as Li. A member of J Squad, DeFord was one of those men who make unlikely but excellent soldiers: short, weakly muscled, able to think outside of Army boxes, bright as hell, and fiercely loyal to Jason, who had saved his life during the Collapse.

When he had the comm link to General Strople, he stepped back and Jason seated himself at the console. “Sir, Colonel Jason Jenner reporting a successful raid on Sierra Depot.”

“Proceed.”

There was no way to tell how much Strople already knew. The radar at Fort Hood would have tracked the movements of the Return . But unless there were additional comsats that Jason didn’t know about, something he would once have thought impossible but now was not so sure of, Strople didn’t know the rest of it.

“As per your orders, sir, I made the decision to attack Sierra Depot based on my knowledge of the situation. The enemy was using the depot as a base for their newly recovered, or imported, F-35s and armored vehicles. A concerted attack on Monterey Base from both air and land led to the start of a siege. We destroyed the force surrounding the base, but our supplies are depleted and New America could have mounted a second siege from the depot. More of my troops are lapsing into comatose states, from which medical personnel can’t extract them. My intel, as per my prior report, was that Dr. Sugiyama was being held at the depot. That raised the possibility of his cooperation with the enemy in accessing the quantum computer without its self-destructing. For all these reasons, I determined on the attack, which was carried out at oh-six hours this morning. The depot has been destroyed. An airborne unit extracted Dr. Sugiyama, who has since died of injuries inflicted by torture. Also extracted were his two young children. Sugiyama was not conscious at the time of extraction and has provided no useful intel.”

“What is the situation of the quantum computer? Is it intact?”

“Unknown, sir.”

“So you don’t know if it can still launch the nukes.”

“No, sir.”

“How did you destroy the force surrounding Monterey base?”

“With bombs dropped from the spaceship Return .”

“And how did you destroy everything at Sierra Depot, possibly including the quantum machinery?”

Jason closed his eyes, opened them again. Here it came. “The same way, sir.”

“You told me in a previous report that the spaceship was not capable of flying laterally more than a hundred miles if it was not in high orbit.”

“I did, sir.”

“Are you telling me, Colonel, that you deliberately lied to me?”

“Yes, sir.”

The voice fifteen hundred miles away remained calm, but Jason heard in it not only the anger he expected, but something like triumph. “Repeat that, Colonel.”

“I falsified information supplied to Headquarters.”