Arluna...
It's not all about business. This goes wayyy beyond business. Doerntz is secured, I transferred him to the KCGS Tranh Truk Ngo and Vu Dao's taking him to Stone Field under a protective detail, but his damn testimony's solid.
god-dammit.
okay, let's roll back a bunch of centuries, right? The Rim Worlds Republic has control of this nice piece of real-estate, this one, as a matter of fact, and House Amaris is BFF with the Camerons. We're talking before Simon Cameron.
This used to be mining country, and the presence of subterranean structures is something you can map with ground penetrating radar.
This site isn't on the survey maps or the claim filings. Nobody dug these tunnels for mining, nobody who was mining would line the tunnels with starslab layered with ferrocrete and a nice barrier of polymer mesh between. It's a bunker complex, and it's deep.
Steve Doerntz' backers wanted the MacAulliffe land, because there's an unobstructed entrance hidden on a cliff face.
Nikki Minh's my adjutant, she's also my favorite RTO. "Got it!"
the heavy doors were pressurized with about a half millibar above ambient, enough to make a small windstorm as they open.
We're in suits, because that much time and you don't know what might've survived in a setup like this-it's like boarding protocols on an abandoned ship, everyone in environmental gear and looking for whatever mutated pathogens might have evolved in this isolation-because life always finds a way.
There might not be any human guards, but automated security measures aren't unheard of. Bolo and Skynet take point without me having to tell them, the Centurions are up-armored models. we advance into the facility.
Past the entry lock, it expands, and a look up shows a kind of ridiculous opulence. Chandeliers and tapestries, tile work and marble.
aside from some minor decay, the cloth's intact in the dry atmosphere, a look down at the dusty floor, and I recognize the tile pattern.
Hard not to, really. The Cameron Star is pretty obvious.
stands out, even. What the hell?
We head deeper in. There's carpet on the adjoining halls, and it's laid out like a wagon-wheel, and I've seen this before.
I just don't know where or when.
only, it's still got power, and milimeter-wave shows no tracks in the dust but us.
Offices. living quarters, work-stations.
where have I seen this before?
We don't take the elevator, there's a stair-well in the southeast corner going down.
we take that.
It opens into the same kind of situation room we have on Spider Moon, in the traffic control areas near the surface.
Consoles laid out in a circular pattern, with an oversight office fronted with ferroglas.
The power down here is still on, and looks like the crew never left. The bodies are dried husks in Star League uniforms.
a few bodies near the elevators aren't. They're in Rim Worlds republic uniforms, and it looks a lot like they were trying to get out.
"samples?"
"Looks like KD-7 Nerve gas residues, boss, we need to keep the suits sealed."
I head up to the oversight office, and there's the Deck Officer. He's got a Rim Worlds Flag on one side, and a Star League flag on the other, flanking him behind his desk.
The papers on the desk dried over the years...centuries. I can read the dating.
"twenty-seven sixty-five..?"
From: The Office of the Regent of the Star League
RE: Field Test Materials 21B/A
Colonel Dietrich: Recall scheduled delivery of modified White Shark delivery systems associated with the 21B project, the field test on Target VC is suspended, there will be no resumption. Sealed testing at the Bravo site indicates this program is a failure on an epic, and I truly mean epic scale.
Recall the delivery.
Further, I have made determinations:
Terminate Project 21 B social pacification airborne delivery agent.
Your research has failed to produce a non-lethal agent for mass pacification of civilian populations, and is instead one of the most virulent things I've ever had the misfortune to observe, you are to terminate further work on this atrocity. All materials, research materials and further data are to be destroyed forthwith.
Make it Never Happened.
-Aleksandr Kerensky,
Commanding General, SLDF
Acting as Regent to the First Lord of the Star League.
"What the hell is this..?"
Bolo, the Centurion RTO from my ship, is logged into one of the working terminals below.
"Huh, that's funny." he says.
I come down to where he's working. "What've you got for me?"
"These are deployment orders for a biological pacfication weapon." He said, "Kowloon's at the top of the list, but he's also got several targets planned in the Taurian Concordat, Outworlds Alliance, Federated suns and three targets in the Free Worlds League, with planned targets in the Dominion of Rassalhague."
"When was the stuff shipped?"
"Most of it wasn't." he tells me, "Only the missiles intended for test use on Kowloon were actually shipped, the rest were dismantled and the payloads dropped into a star...but there are full specifications in a poorly deleted file. someone could manufacture it with this information."
and that's what whoever was backing Doerntz wants. a Star League era bioweapons project.
son of a bitch. my gut is cramping and it's not my biology doing it.
"holy ******."
