Read Online The Reaper Plague by David VanDyke - Free Book Online

raised
Presbyterian doesn’t mean I believe everything is predestined. It
does mean I don’t have your airy conviction it will all work
out.”
    “ Yes, you Scots were always
a dour lot. But that’s an asset in your line of work.”
    “ Granted.” Cassandra fell
silent for a moment, munching and sipping. “What about the Reaper
Plague?”
    “ That sounds,” DJ observed,
“like a deliberate change of subject. But all right, what about it?
Elise?”
    “ We’re working on it. We
have forty days or so, if Raphaela was correct. But just like Demon
Plague Two, we have to have samples to develop a biovaccine. The
antiviral nanovaccine that we have now attacks everything except the Eden Plague. That will give Edens significant but
not complete protection, and it’s the best we have now. We’re
working on some broad-spectrum approaches using an amalgamation of
the Demon Plagues’ proteins that we think – assuming the
Reaper Plague is not too different – we think will give
about thirty percent immunity. At that level we might as well give
normals the nano instead.” Elise sighed, showing her
weariness.
    DJ stood up, to pace the strip of hardwood
floor behind his chair while Ezekiel continued to play quiet random
notes. “Speaking of Raphaela…” He smacked his fist into his palm,
contemplative. “What’s the latest report?”
    “ They’re halfway to the
Mars orbit line. She’s sent a few texts saying everything is fine.
Anyone with a radio telescope could pick them up but I swore all of
the FC astronomers to secrecy and the media don’t seem to have
found out yet. They will eventually, though. Someone always talks.
Does it matter?”
    “ I guess not. Nothing much
we can do from here. Has she responded to our messages?”
    “ Not directly,” said Cass.
“I don’t know if her receiver is sensitive enough. I’ve been loath
to send a high-powered transmission for fear of interception. I
wish we’d set up a code of some sort before this
happened.”
    DJ snorted. “Lots of things we didn’t do
because we failed to anticipate something like this. Skull had a
point – we were so focused on the plagues that we forgot about the
spaceship and its technology. Five-meter targets.”
    “ Shoot the nearest ones
first, I know,” Cass responded ruefully, “but sometimes the
farthest ones away are the ones that get you.”
     
     

 
     
-12-

    Master Sergeant Repeth took a deep breath
outside her office door and readied herself for her coming
performance, then opened the door. Her five key noncommissioned
officers stood at parade rest in front of her desk as she stepped
inside. “At ease!” called Staff Sergeant Grusky, the command the
Army used when a more senior NCO entered a room in a formal
situation.
    “ Grusky, stand fast. The
rest of you get out and stand by,” she snapped. The four squad
leaders filed out while Staff Sergeant Grusky stood stiffly at
parade rest.
    Once they shut the door, she exploded into
action. Her hands reached for Grusky’s shoulders from behind and
spun him around, grasping his lapels in a classic bully’s grip as
she drove him backward until he slammed into the bare cinder-block
wall. She lifted him up onto his toes as his eyes bulged with shock
and fear.
    “ You know, Grusky,” she
snarled, “my father, Marine Sergeant Major Marion Repeth, used to
tell me about the old Corps and the days of wall-to-wall
counseling. In my time in service, we’ve had a kinder, gentler
military, but no longer. Welcome to my new old way of doing
business.”
    She spun him two hundred seventy degrees
around, slamming him up against the adjacent wall. His head cracked
against the concrete and his eyes crossed. “We don’t have time for
namby-pamby crap. You think because I’m an Eden I won’t put you
through hell? Well think again.”
    She spun him again, one-eighty and five long
steps to the far wall, this time taking care to knee him in the
guts as she did it so his head didn’t take